Masculinity in Yu Hua's fiction from modernism to postmodernism

The Tiananmen Incident in 1989 triggered the process during which Chinese society evolved from so-called "high modernism" to vague "postmodernism". The purpose of this thesis is to examine and evaluate the gender representation in Chinese male intellectuals' writing when they face the aforementioned social evolution. The exemplary writer from the band of Chinese male intellectuals I have chosen is Yu Hua, one of the most important and successful novelists in China today. Coincidently, his writing career, spanning from the mid-1980s until present, parallels the Chinese intellectuals' pursuit of modernism and their acceptance of postmodernism. In my thesis, I re-visit four of his works in different eras, including One Kind of Reality (1988), Classical Love (1988), To Live (1992), and Brothers (2005), to explore the social, psychological, and aesthetical elements that formulate/reformulate male identity, male power and male/female relation in his fictional world. Inspired by those fictional male characters who are violent, anxious or even effeminized in his novels, one can perceive male intellectuals' complex feelings towards current Chinese society and culture. It is believed that this study will contribute to the literary and cultural investigation of the third-world intellectuals.