TY - JOUR
T1 - A dissonance of discourses
T2 - Literary theory, ideology, and translation in mo yan and Chinese literary studies
AU - Klein, Lucas
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2016. The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - Mo Yan's 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature quickly turned into the most controversial international literary prize of recent memory. The controversy took place largely in English, and largely on the American Internet, where as much as Mo Yan was honored as being an important literary voice from a country whose contemporary cultural products are often neglected, he was criticized for supporting the Chinese Communist Party and its government. Defenders have pointed out that the politics in his fiction are neither as simple nor as straightforward as his party membership might otherwise indicate, but critics have said he writes a "daft hilarity" in a "diseased language," calling his works in translation "superior to the original in their aesthetic unity and sureness." Taking a detailed look at the controversy and debate, I examine the theoretical assumptions and stakes at work in the reading of Mo Yan and his Nobel, with attention to their ideological underpinnings, followed with a discussion on the importance of considering translation and the relationship between literary reading and politics. I close with a look toward a broadly applicable model of internationalist reading I call translational.
AB - Mo Yan's 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature quickly turned into the most controversial international literary prize of recent memory. The controversy took place largely in English, and largely on the American Internet, where as much as Mo Yan was honored as being an important literary voice from a country whose contemporary cultural products are often neglected, he was criticized for supporting the Chinese Communist Party and its government. Defenders have pointed out that the politics in his fiction are neither as simple nor as straightforward as his party membership might otherwise indicate, but critics have said he writes a "daft hilarity" in a "diseased language," calling his works in translation "superior to the original in their aesthetic unity and sureness." Taking a detailed look at the controversy and debate, I examine the theoretical assumptions and stakes at work in the reading of Mo Yan and his Nobel, with attention to their ideological underpinnings, followed with a discussion on the importance of considering translation and the relationship between literary reading and politics. I close with a look toward a broadly applicable model of internationalist reading I call translational.
KW - Chinese Literature
KW - Literary Theory
KW - Mo Yan
KW - Nobel Prize
KW - Translation
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U2 - 10.5325/complitstudies.53.1.0170
DO - 10.5325/complitstudies.53.1.0170
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:84964861712
SN - 0010-4132
VL - 53
SP - 170
EP - 197
JO - Comparative Literature Studies
JF - Comparative Literature Studies
IS - 1
ER -