East Asian Languages and Literatures Theses and Dissertations

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Browsing East Asian Languages and Literatures Theses and Dissertations by Subject "Asian literature"

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    Don't Believe a Word I Say: Metafiction in Contemporary Chinese Literature
    (University of Oregon, 2011-06) Kaiser, Marjolijn, 1984-
    This thesis focuses on the metafictional elements in selected works of the contemporary Chinese authors Gao Xingjian, Huang Jinshu, and Wang Xiaobo. I define metafiction as both a formal feature inherent in the text and the result of an approach towards that text. I argue that metafiction confronts us with the (postmodern) issues of 1) the ontological status of the text, 2) the figure of the author and reader, and 3) the (ambiguous) relationship between fiction and reality. Simultaneously, it accepts and celebrates this self-conscious and ambiguous character, encouraging readers to do the same. By combining elements from the indigenous literary tradition and international literary movements, contemporary Chinese metafiction is a valuable contribution to the study of metafiction. Ultimately, it shows what it means to write and read in a Chinese as well as in a global context.
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    Literary subjects adrift: A cultural history of early modern Japanese castaway narratives, ca. 1780--1880
    (University of Oregon, 2009-03) Wood, Michael S., 1969-
    In the postwar era, early modern or Edo period (1600-1868) Japan has most often been represented as a culture in isolation due to ostensibly draconian Bakufu regime policies that promised death to any one returning from abroad ( sakokuron , or the "Closed-Country" theory). While historians of Japan acknowledge limited contact with Dutch, Chinese, Korean, and Ryukyuans, the two hundred and sixty-some years of the Edo Period has consistently been interpreted as a time in which an indigenous Japanese culture developed and flourished without the corrupting influence of extensive foreign contact. This project takes as its subject the stories of thousands of Japanese fisherman and sailors who became distressed at sea ( hyôryûmin ) and subsequently drifted throughout the Pacific before being rescued and repatriated by foreigners during the late 18 th and 19 th centuries. The hundreds of narratives that comprise this textual category of early modern hyôryûki or "castaway narratives" served as the primary means of representing encounters with foreigners in and around the Pacific region and, in turn projecting an emerging Japanese national consciousness. The origins of these hyôryûki are tied to the earlier establishment of diplomatic protocol for handling repatriated castaways primarily within an East Asian context and the kuchigaki ("oral testimonial") narrative records that resulted from interrogations of the repatriated subjects by both bakufu and domain officials. Late Edo castaways also had their stories of drift recorded in kuchigaki form, however with the encroachment of first Russian, and later English, American, and other western ships in the waters off the coast of Japan in the late Edo period (post-1780) other hyôryûki forms--both scholarly and popular--came to proliferate, as it became imperative to translate and re-imagine geopolitical developments in the greater Pacific. This dissertation not only uncovers a diverse textual and cultural category of hyôryûki , but also the complicated interrelationship between cultural production and concrete territorial and political concerns of the State. In so doing, it not only challenges traditional historiography of early modern Japan, but also reclaims a certain cultural specificity for the late Edo Japanese hyôryûki , contextualizing these texts within a more global process of colonization and modern Nation-State formation.
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    Sata Ineko and Hirabayashi Taiko: The Café and Jokyû as a Stage for Social Criticism
    (University of Oregon, 2011-09) Kusakabe, Madoka
    Sedimentations of transformations and experiences empowered the 20th century writers Sata Ineko and Hirabayashi Taiko as writers. Because of their mutual belief in the early principles of the proletarian literary movement--writing the reality of the working class from their perspectives--both produced works centered on daily life. In not only delineating but also examining the daily occurrences, their stories and critiques acutely exposed the issues, the conditions, and the exploitation of the working class under capitalism, particularly the unfair and unreasonable treatment of women and women workers under the patriarchal slogan "Good Wives and Wise Mothers" and the discrimination of women workers and writers even within the proletarian movement. The café proved the best site for both to offer keen analyses. Materializing the actual working experiences of jokyû (café waitresses), they exposed the superficiality of Japanese modernity in the 1920s and 30s, the suppression and oppression of women under patriarchy, commodification and exploitation of working women under capitalism, and the ultimate consequences--social myopia and deterioration of human life. While the café was for jokyû a site of exploration and challenge by overturning the dominant power hierarchy practiced in society, for Sata and Hirabayashi, writing about the café challenged the prejudice and confinement of existing categorizations such as "women," "women workers," " jokyû ," "women writers," and "proletarian writers." Both Sata and Hirabayashi treated the café and jokyû as realistic and multifaceted. To strengthen this realism, both writers relied on their own corporeal experiences and sensations, supporting honest illustrations of power dynamics and the dual-system oppression of women at play within and beyond the café environment. Both acknowledged the body as a site of complication and possibility. Through their acknowledgments beyond the surface inscriptions that restrict and limit who and what lies within, both Sata and Hirabayashi contended that the body was an interactive and potentially productive catalyst for change. For them, the corporeal experience proved more effective for gaining consciousness, obtaining class-consciousness, and eventually achieving ideological resolution than through doctrinal readings and teachings.
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    The tanci "Feng shuangfei": A female perspective on the gender and sexual politics of late-Qing China
    (University of Oregon, 2010-09) Liu, Wenjia, 1981-
    The late-Qing tanci "A Pair of Male Phoenixes Flying Together" (Feng shuangfei ; preface dated 1899) is unusual for its depiction of a wide variety of gender issues and sexual relationships. Because the 52-chapter work is credibly attributed to the female poet Cheng Huiying, who is known to have written the poetry collection Beichuang yin 'gao , the tanci gives scholars a unique opportunity to see how a gentry woman thought of the gender roles and sexual politics of the late Qing. My dissertation contains two major sections. Chapters I and II look at Cheng Huiying and her work as part of the `talented women" ( cainü ) culture. These two chapters demonstrate how Cheng Huiying deliberately establishes herself as a unique female writing subject and advocates women's agency in determining their own marriage arrangements. one of women's biggest concerns in premodern China. Chapters III to VI put Feng shuangfei into the larger context of male-authored fiction and examine how it adopts and rewrites the conventions and motifs common to xiaoshuo fiction from a female writer's perspective. I first argue that Feng shuangfei can be considered a serious literary work due to its sophisticated structural design and characterization, although tanci are usually considered as more popular literature. I then evaluate how the female author of this tanci subtly reinvents three gendered motifs that commonly appear in male-authored xiaoshuo fiction. The three motifs are male same-sex eroticism and homosociality, female same-sex desires, and the stereotypes of shrew and ideal wife. Through subtle twists in the plot, the tanci suggests the possibility of the expression of female subjectivity and agency within patriarchal Confucian society even while it follows and supports the normative Confucian order. The perspectives on gender norms and sexual practices offered in this tanci both display how a gentry woman thought about these issues in late imperial China and suggest how the rapid and vast social and ideological changes occurring during the turn of the century opened new spaces for Cheng Huiying to imagine increased agency and autonomy for women within the domestic sphere.