Ink Dances in Limbo: Gao Xingjian's Writing as Cultural Translation
Jessica Yeung
Abstract
This study of the entire written works of Gao Xingjian, China's first winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, analyses each group of his writing and argues for a reading of Gao's writing as a phenomenon of “cultural translation”—his adoption of modernism in the 1980s is a translation of the European literary paradigm, and his attempt at postmodernist writing in the 1990s and 2000s is the effect of an exilic nihilism expressive of a diasporic subjectivity struggling to translate himself into his host culture. This book looks at Gao's works from a double perspective—in terms of their relevance ... More
This study of the entire written works of Gao Xingjian, China's first winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, analyses each group of his writing and argues for a reading of Gao's writing as a phenomenon of “cultural translation”—his adoption of modernism in the 1980s is a translation of the European literary paradigm, and his attempt at postmodernist writing in the 1990s and 2000s is the effect of an exilic nihilism expressive of a diasporic subjectivity struggling to translate himself into his host culture. This book looks at Gao's works from a double perspective—in terms of their relevance both to China and to the West. Avoiding the common polarized approaches to Gao's works, this book's dual approach means that it neither extols them as the most brilliant works of contemporary Chinese literature eligible for elevation to the metaphysical level, nor dismisses them as nothing more than elitist and misogynist mediocre writings; rather the book sees this important body of work in a more nuanced way.
Keywords:
Gao Xingjian,
cultural translation,
Modernism,
postmodernist writing,
China,
West
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2008 |
Print ISBN-13: 9789622099210 |
| Published to Hong Kong Scholarship Online: September 2011 |
DOI:10.5790/hongkong/9789622099210.001.0001 |
