A Photographic History of Contemporary Chinese Literature

Author: Wu Xiuming, Editor-in-Chief
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2003-05-01
Features: This book provides a documentary account of contemporary literature, aiming to explore the field and its achievements, summarize developmental patterns and lessons learned, and enable students to gain a comprehensive and systematic understanding of the main characteristics and general outline of contemporary literature. It focuses on cultivating students' abilities in reading, appreciating, and analyzing contemporary literary works. Naturally, as a textbook, this book can only briefly outline the basic development of contemporary literature, with a primary focus on introducing literary works, especially those of major writers. The compilation of this book aspires to break through in this aspect. Unlike most conventional textbooks, we strive to minimize personal subjective bias, emphasizing the documentation, originality, and objectivity of the content. The majority of the text is dedicated to compiling and introducing original documents and historical materials, while we ourselves speak as little as possible. Even when we do speak, we focus more on description than on judgment. In terms of format, this is relatively close to a descriptive literary history. In summary, we aim to present as comprehensive and detailed a display of historical materials as possible to restore the authentic and multifaceted state of contemporary literature, letting the facts speak for themselves.
The study of ancient Chinese literature and the history of ancient literature has a well-known tradition of collecting, organizing, and distinguishing documentary materials. It has always placed great emphasis on conducting research based on reliable historical facts. The compilation of this book draws inspiration from this tradition in terms of methodology and format. The specific content is mainly composed of the following five sections:
(1) Brief introductions to writers (works);
(2) Selected excerpts from critical essays (highlighting the diverse or even opposing views of representative critics from different periods or even the same period);
(3) Self-narratives by writers;
(4) Editor's comments;
(5) References and discussion questions.