Ideology and Form in Yan Lianke's Fiction

Introduction: Contemporariness and Contemporary Chinese Literature

Yan Lianke and Chinese Fiction in the 1980s and 1990s

Minjian Writing and Contemporary Chinese Writers

The Alternative Contemporariness of Yan Lianke

Selection of Texts and Summary of Chapters

Notes

Bibliography

1 Mythorealism as Method

The Unfilial Son of Realism

The Paradox of Mythorealism

Mythorealist Causality and Realities in the Western Perspective

Ideology, Form, and the Representation of Reality in Mythorealism

Notes

Bibliography

2 AIDS and the Haunted Minjian: Negotiating the National Character in Dream of Ding Village

Introduction

The Fever as an Allegory of the National Character

The Bystanders and the Ghost's Gaze

Haunting Dreams and the Tainted Moral Defender

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

3 Disenchanted Shijing and Spiritual Crisis: Allusive Sex and Illusive Disgust in Ballad, Hymn, Ode

Introduction

Ballad, Hymn, Ode, and Its Mytorealist Components

The Desymbolized World and the Disenchanted Intellectuals

The Indeterminacy of Sex and the Schizophrenic

The Disgusting and the Dystopian Imagination of Spiritual Home

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

4 Docile Body and Ethical Self: The Religious, the Grotesque, and the Mythological in The Four Books

Introduction

The Re-Ed District: An Absurdist Foucauldian Panopticon

Rediscovering Haizi: A Religious Care for Self and Others

Crazy Wheat and Cannibalism: Renegotiating Self through the Grotesque

The Eastern Sisyphus: A Mythological Reconciliation between the Political and the Ethical

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index