HOW TO READ MODERN CHINESE LITERATURE IN ENGLISH? THE WOMEN BESIDE/S MODERNISM

Abstract

This thesis historicises a mid-century phenomenon that saw numerous Chinese writers working in English. I study this “anglophonic turn” mainly through the careers of Yang Buwei, Ling Shuhua, and Eileen Chang, all of whom produced original writing or self-translations in English. Their texts register the successes and disappointments of Chinese modernity, while advancing stylistic experiments and political commitments through the tricky geopolitics of the Second World War and the Cultural Cold War. Their stories of linguistic and geographical migration offer a women-centred history of anglophone Chinese literature. Their texts offer fresh possibilities for comparative work in modernist studies. To this end, I use the conceptual metaphor “beside/s” to note their proximities to (“beside”) and divergences from (“besides”) anglophone modernism. “Beside/s” avoids the totalising risks of reading "for" modernism, the antagonism of reading "against" modernism, and sidesteps questions of “who/what came first?” that bedevil practices of reading "before" or "after" modernism.