Telling Details: Chinese Fiction, World Literature Xiao Jiwei
What is a detail? How is it different from xijie, its Chinese counterpart? Is reading for the details fundamentally different from reading for the plot? Did xijie xiaoshuo, the Chinese novel of…
Specifikacia Telling Details: Chinese Fiction, World Literature Xiao Jiwei
What is a detail? How is it different from xijie, its Chinese counterpart? Is reading for the details fundamentally different from reading for the plot? Did xijie xiaoshuo, the Chinese novel of details, give the world its earliest form of modern fiction? Inspired by studies of vision and modernity as well as cinema, this book gazes out on the larger world through the small aperture of the detail, highlighting how concrete literary minutiae become telling as they reveal the dynamics of seeing and hearing, the vibrations of the mind, the complexity of the everyday, and the imperative to recognize the minute, the humble, and the hidden. In a strain of masterpieces of xijie xiaoshuo, such details play a key role in pivoting the novel from didacticism towards a capacious modern form.Examining the Chinese detail as both a common idiom and a unique concept, and
Chinese World Order
World Literature in Theory