Cultural Revolution Manuscripts: Unofficial Entertainment Fiction from 1970s China

Description

This book investigates handwritten entertainment fiction (shouchaoben wenxue) which circulated clandestinely during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Lena Henningsen’s analyses of exemplary stories and their variation across different manuscript copies brings to light the creativity of these readers-turned-copyists. Through copying, readers modified the stories and became secondary authors who reflected on the realities of the Cultural Revolution. Through an enquiry into actual reading practices as mapped in autobiographical accounts and into intertextual references within the stories, the book also positions manuscript fiction within the larger reading cosmos of the long 1970s. Henningsen analyzes the production, circulation and consumption of these texts, considering continuities across the alleged divide of the end of the Mao-era and the beginning of the reform period. The book further reveals how these texts achieved fruitful afterlives as re-published bestsellers or as adaptations into comic books or movies, continuing to shape the minds of their audience and the imaginations of the past. Chapter 5 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com. Acknowledgments Note on References to Primary Sources Praise for Cultural Revolution Manuscripts Contents List of Figures 1 Introduction Context: Reading During the Cultural Revolution Texts and Practices: Shouchaoben Fiction as a Genre and the Concept of Secondary Authorship The Post-Cultural Revolutionary Afterlives of Entertainment Shouchaoben: Publication, Adaptation and State of Research Primary Sources Aims and Structure of This Book References 2 The Writing and Rewriting of an Exemplary Shouchaoben: Zhang Yang’s The Second Handshake During the Cultural Revolution Text: Plot and Themes Context: Zhang Yang’s Biography and His (Re)Writing of the Story Writing and Rewriting Shouchaoben Fiction Circulating Shouchaoben Fiction Shouchaoben Fiction Rewritten: Continuity and Change The Second Handshake Within the Shouchaoben Cosmos References 3 Texts on Travel: Stability Across Variation and Secondary Authorship in Espionage Shouchaoben Fiction Context: Crime and Espionage During China’s Long 1970s The Plum Blossom Case A Strand of Golden Hair Three Journeys to Jiangnan Texts’ Journeys, Authorships and Readerships References 4 Shouchaoben as Literary Avant-Garde: Open Love Letters and Waves Contents and Context of Liu Qingfeng’s Open Love Letters Contents and Context of Bei Dao’s Waves Post-Maoist Literature: Educated Youth Literature, Scar Literature and Obscure Poetry Open Love Letters and Waves as Avant-Garde Literature Contents: Revisiting the Past, Criticism of the Present Language and Style: Between Clarity and Obscurity Polyphony in Form: New and Multiple Voices Aesthetic Innovation and Avant-Garde and Their Institutional Context References 5 Ways of Reading: Cultural Revolution Reading Acts Distant Reading: What Matters? Popular Reading Materials Close Reading: How Does It Matter, and Why? Writing and Copying as Reading? Hand-Copying Practices Blind Spots—What Is Missing? Reading Materials Beyond Autobiographical Sources Appendix to Chapter 5 References 6 World Literature and Intertextuality: Reading Acts in Shouchaoben Fiction Reading Practices in Entertainment Shouchaoben Reading Practices in Zhang Yang’s The Second Handshake Shouchaoben and World Literature: Reading Practices in Avant-Garde Shouchaoben Toward the World? References 7 From Underground into the Mainstream: Shouchaoben Fiction on the Commercial Book Market Context: Official Publications of Cultural Revolution Shouchaoben Text: From Manuscript to Book Shouchao Practices in the New Era: Adaptation and Authorship References 8 Conclusion: Shouchaoben Fiction as Texts in Motion References Bibliography Index