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  • Postmodern Narrative without Postmodern Conditions:Home-Made Modernism in Lu Xun’s Old Tales Retold
  • Ming Dong Gu (bio)

Postmodernism arose in response to or in reaction against modernism in the West. Geo-culturally recognized as a Western phenomenon, it gradually spread its impact to third-world countries, which are, as a rule in modern times, on the receiving end. Since the arrival of Western literary theories, Chinese literary terms have gradually lost their currency. Nowadays, literary criticism in China cannot function properly if we cease to use Western terms like “realism,” “modernism,” “postmodernism,” and so on. The three terms cited supposedly appeared at different stages of development: realism first, modernism second, and then postmodernism. If a writer lives in a period in which realism is the dominant trend, his or her works will most likely be classified into a category with the label of realism, or its sister modes, naturalism and critical realism. This way of evaluation applies to the study of Lu Xun (1881–1936), father of modern Chinese literature. Since Lu Xun wrote his literary works in a historical period in which realism was the dominant mode, he has been regarded all along as a master of critical realism, despite the fact that many of his experimental works clearly violate the principles of realism. Although some scholars [End Page 81] have discovered patently unrealistic elements in Lu Xun’s writings, the critical consensus has not been altered.

In an influential article promoting third-world literature in the West, Fredric Jameson conducts a reading of Lu Xun’s stories and observes in the literary studies of China (and the third world in general) an “inversion” of the literary methodology in the West in the sphere of political commitment. In terms of this observation, he views Lu Xun’s stories as exemplifying the will of Chinese intellectuals to participate voluntarily in politics and social revolution, and he justifies his proposal of “national allegories” as a conceptual category to characterize third-world writers’ literary works (1986 71–72). Despite the interesting twist given to Lu Xun’s stories, Jameson’s idea of “national allegories” reconfirms the consensus about the realistic and critical realistic nature of Lu Xun’s literary works. In this article, however, I argue that literary concepts growing out of Western literary development do not apply neatly to the historical development of Chinese literature and that the critical consensus of Lu Xun as a master of realism needs to be revised.

In the present-day field of Chinese literature, few scholars would relate postmodernism to Lu Xun’s literary works for very good reasons. Although many literary and cultural movements that have been associated with postmodernism can be traced back to the 1950s, 1960s, and even earlier (Bertens), it was during the three decades from the 1970s to 1990s that the term became pervasive in Western academia and eventually developed into a household word in global cultures (Jameson 1991). Despite its numerous sources, the term gained its identity in large measure through its relation to modernism. Scholars agree that an adequate understanding of postmodernism “always require[s] there to have been something called modernism in the first place” (Connor 113). Chronologically, the postmodern is supposed to have appeared after the rise of modernism, but some scholars argue equally convincingly that postmodern features in literature and art existed long before the rise of postmodernism. Indeed, they can be found almost throughout literary history (Elam; Readings and Schaber). Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein, for example, may be placed in the gallery of postmodern works by Jorge Luis Borges, John Barth, Alasdiar Gray, and Salman Rushdie. Because of this situation, it would be of theoretical importance to explore whether postmodern narrative may appear before the rise of postmodernism. [End Page 82]

Postmodernism in China is believed to trace its origin to the Western roots. In this article, I wish to examine Lu Xun’s last story collection, Old Tales Retold, and conduct a close reading of “Forging the Swords,” with the intention of finding answers to these questions: (1) Do Western concepts of modernism and postmodernism have a relevance to our understanding of Lu Xun’s literary achievements? (2) What is...

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