Ideology and Form in Yan Lianke’s Fiction

<p>Xie analyzes three novels by the international award-winning Chinese writer Yan Lianke and investigates how his signature “mythorealist” form produces textual meanings that subvert the totalizing reality prescribed by literary realism.</p><p>The term mythorealism which Yan coined to describe his own writing style refers to a set of literary devices that incorporate both Chinese and Western literary elements while remaining primarily grounded in Chinese folk culture and literary tradition. In his use of mythorealism carrying a burden of social critique that cannot allow itself to become “political” Yan transcends the temporality and provinciality of immediate social events and transforms his potential socio-political commentaries into more diversified concerns for humanity existential issues and spiritual crisis. Xie identifies three modes of mythorealist narrative exemplified in Yan’s three novels: the <i>minjian </i>(folk) mode in <i>Dream of Ding Village</i> the allusive mode in <i>Ballad Hymn Ode</i> and the enigmatic mode in <i>The Four Books. </i>By positioning itself against an ambiguous articulation of social determinants of historical events that would perhaps be more straightforward in a purely realist text each mode of mythorealism moves its narrative from the overt politicality of the subject matter to the existential riddle of negotiating an alternative reality.</p><p>A groundbreaking study of one of contemporary China’s most important authors that will be of great value to scholars and students of Chinese literature.</p>