Cross-disciplinary integration (Comprehensive Discussion on World Chinese Literature)

Author: Liu Jun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-09-01
Features: Positioning one's work as conducting basic research, starting from specific writers, works, and issues, analyzing certain literary phenomena, and evaluating the successes and failures of writers' creations—these are fundamental principles in my research on world Chinese literature. If my future research can surpass its current scope and develop into a more systematic framework, it must be built upon this foundation.—Liu Jun
If compared to From Taiwan and Hong Kong to Overseas—A Multifaceted Examination of Cross-Regional Chinese Literature, Compassionate Sentiment—A Biography of Ba Xianyong has expanded the research scope. This book, in turn, extends further on the foundation of From Taiwan and Hong Kong to Overseas—A Multifaceted Examination of Cross-Regional Chinese Literature. It not only incorporates modern Chinese literature into the discussion, broadening the scope, but also explores a wider variety of issues.
The book is divided into three parts, some of which focus on specific issues, others on writers, and yet others on research works. However, all parts implicitly follow a historical thread of continuity and outward expansion—from "May Fourth" literature to Chinese literature in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and overseas (cross-regional Chinese literature). Of course, the overly broad interests make the topics somewhat scattered, resulting in a lack of systematicity in the book's themes and weak internal connections between them. The scattered perspective remains the fundamental structural form of this book.
If asked about the internal connections between the different chapters, I can only say: with the world as the scope and Chinese (Mandarin) as the medium, this book aims to showcase the external appearance and symbiotic forms of modern Chinese literature (mainland China) and Chinese literature in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and overseas (cross-regional Chinese literature). This is the implicit thread and the structural foundation of the book.