The poetics of memory : anecdote studies in republican China

Abstract

This thesis investigates the Chinese anecdote as a form of miscellaneous writing, and primarily focuses on anecdote studies during the Republican period. It is comprised of three chapters. The first chapter is an introduction that traces the historical origins of Chinese anecdotal writings and clarifies the subtle discrepancy between “anecdote” and “anecdote study” in the context of the Chinese literary tradition. The anecdote, however, is generally regarded as a form of anti-history and anti-fiction in the Western context, but it is regarded as a form of supplemental writing that contains details left untold by orthodox writings in the Chinese tradition. I argue that because the humanities in modern China experienced academic institutionalization, through which and other combined forces, literature (wenxue 文學) as a concept referring to humane letters in general, has been redefined to the fine art belles-lettres. So in this historical framework, during their times the anecdotists strive to achieve their ambition of historiography, yet in the reception framework of the contemporary viewpoint, the anecdotes are more often than not deemed as belletristic literature. Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 concentrate on two scholars who were seminal in establishing the study of anecdotes, Huang Qiuyue 黃秋岳 (1891-1937) and Qu Duizhi 瞿兌之 (1894-1973). From the two perspectives of chrono-poetics and geo-poetics, this thesis analyzes their anecdotes by employing theories of cultural poetics and memory. I argue that together they reveal that the tradition of anecdotes is possibly a hidden tradition between history and literature, which effects and blurs the boundary between the two. Notably, the anecdotes written by Republican scholars embody the poetics of memory within, which manifested a certain truth of the emotion and interiority, and function as a transfer station in the grey zone varying from the writings of the archaic to the prose of the modern. Keywords: zhanggu; anecdote; Qu Duizhi; Huang Qiuyue; Republican China.

Date of Award	2018
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology