The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature ed. by A. Kirk Denton (review)

The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature, edited by Kirk Denton, is a kaleidoscopic collection of fifty-seven scholarly essays written by an international team of academics and covering a broad range of topics, works and authors from the late-Qing period (1895-1911) up to the present day. Its geographic purview goes beyond the borders of the nation-state to evaluate the literary contribution of Chinese diasporic and Sinitic literary communities and, in so doing, it gives ample space to the relatively new research field of so-called Sinophone literature. Moreover, the book offers an extremely user-friendly and easily browsable table of contents followed by a handy chronology of major historical events from the First Opium War (1839-42) to the victory of the Progressive Party in the 2000 Taiwan election, as well as a comprehensive final index (pinyin only).

Logically structured and extremely informative, the Companion opens with a short preface, where the purpose of bringing to life this collection of essays is spelled out. It is primarily meant to be used as a classroom resource for students to complement the reading of primary texts in modern Chinese literature, an intent which is perfectly in line with the etymology of the word "companion," whose meaning is to "accompany" the reader.

As Denton further explains, the coverage of the Companion spans fiction, poetry, and drama, but leaves out the essay (sanwen) because this is not generally taught in university courses, and due to lack of space. Though somehow understandable, this choice nonetheless appears a bit perplexing because the essay was instrumental in the construction of the modern Chinese concept of literature. As Denton himself pointed out in his 1995 edited anthology Modern Chinese Literary Thought, "this process of intellectual exploration and the move toward modernity was embodied in, among other things, writings about literature, which stands at the very heart of this cultural tradition" (1).

The essay collection is divided into two parts. Part One features a series of thematic essays which help the reader start making sense of the huge volume of literary phenomena and elements of novelty characterizing over a century of experimentations, alterations, and homecomings, and exposed, individually and more in detail in the informative essays that flesh out the much longer and chronologically-structured Part Two. An extensive bibliography is provided at the end of each essay and the reader is encouraged to consult the MCLC Resource Center for further bibliographic sources (23).

The thematic essays, which are preceded by a historical overview, address key aspects and issues related to the making of modern Chinese literature throughout the twentieth century. Together, they form a rather cohesive whole, like a puzzle made up of the following pieces: "Canon and Literary History" (Yingjin Zhang), "Language and Literary Form" (Charles Laughlin), "Literary Communities" (Michel Hockx), "Contested Classical Poetry" (Shengqing Wu), "Diaspora" Shuyu Kong), "Sinophone Literature" (Brian Bernards) and "Literature and Film Adaptation" (Hsiu-Chuang Deppman).

Denton's historical overview debates the origins of Chinese literary modernity and offers a complete periodization, which is based on politically driven "conventional PRC representations" while simultaneously questioning them (4). The overarching theme concerns the changes in what constitutes modernity for Chinese writers, highlighting the political use of literature and the pulverization of literary trends in post-socialist China due to market needs. The reference to the difference between Chinese and Western modernism (11) is crucial, although it could have been given more space. The distinction between the concepts of wen and wenxue (6) would deserve to be clarified more accurately in an introductory essay. In The Columbia History of Chinese Literature, Victor Mair remarks that "in order to understand the intellectual life of China of the last two thousand years, one must grasp the importance and significance of wen" (2). In his essay included in the Companion, Michel Hockx fills this gap by succinctly stating that "emphasis in teaching shifted from memorization and reproduction...