Old tales retold: Contemporary Chinese fiction and the classical tradition

Gushi xinbian or "old tales retold" are fictionalized reminiscences in which authors reanimate timeworn myths and legends, often exploiting their central figures to expose, inform, and occasionally even dignify contemporary cultural principles and social or political commandments.; This dissertation takes a comprehensive literature-critical approach to this tradition of gushi xinbian or rewriting old tales, dealing with it from a number of angles, without falling into the trap either of simply tracing the literary evolution of the tales without interpretation or of excluding completely the "historical content" or necessity of historical background. Delving deeper into Marston Anderson's initial inquiry, I answer questions that include: What is the nature of the dynamic interaction between the traditional and retold versions? How have periods of cultural and sexual (as well as historical and political) redefinition pushed writers to (re)turn to traditional narratives as important sources of self-understanding and individual creativity? Have authors discovered in the myths of China's past a set of cultural and sexual mores superior to the currently accepted ones? Or have they perhaps created instead a "counterhistory" that reinterprets the tales in an effort to interpret the crises of Chinese modernity/postmodernity and to justify the kind of radical changes in Chinese culture that they believe to be necessary in the modern and contemporary periods? Pursuing the way in which writers conceived their rewritings serves three purposes: First, it helps elucidate the meaning(s) and function(s) of gushi xinbian. Secondly, because I present gushi xinbian as a genre that critiques history and the narrative mode that has been used to endorse history, "lishi xiaoshuo" or "historical novels", this pursuit also establishes a framework for inquiry into such "lishi xiaoshuo". Thirdly, in addressing the issue of the modernization of antiquity, I shed light on the importance and problematic of classical literature within the modern Chinese literary tradition as a whole. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...