The Uneasy Narrator: Chinese Fiction from the Traditional to the Modern (LONDON ORIENTAL SERIES)

In the hierarchy of Chinese culture, fiction once occupied a low position. But in twentieth-century China, fiction has become a highly important cultural discourse. This book offers a historical analysis of the narrative form of Chinese fiction, and traces in detail its development from the traditional mode to the modern. By means of this formal analysis, the book tries to find the root cause for this development in the changing structure of Chinese culture in the early years of the twentieth century.