Presentation Schedule
Essayisation and the Chinese Novel: New Trends in Fiction during the War of Resistance (1931-1945) and Civil War (1945-1949) (95056)
Session Chair: Supamonta Supanan
This presentation will be live-streamed via Zoom (Online Access)
Saturday, 8 November 2025 12:15
Session: Session 1
Room: Live-Stream Room 2
Presentation Type:Live-Stream Presentation
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While the Republican era (1912-1949) was dominated largely by the short story and essay, China’s War of Resistance against Japan (1931-1945) and Civil War (1945-1949) witnessed an outpouring of mid- to long-length works by authors such as Lu Ling 路翎 (1923-94), Fei Ming 废名 (1901-1967), Feng Zhi 冯至 (1905-1993), Shen Congwen 沈从文, Eileen Chang 张爱玲 (1920-1995), and many others, a trend reflecting writers’ desire to understand the self within the larger context of the war and national collective.
Yet, works from this period, in particular from the latter years of war, often feature unclear and unfinished plots and experiment with a variety of divergent narrative perspectives and temporal frames. Moreover, they are characterized by what I have referred to in my study on wartime culture (FitzGerald 2013) as the ‘essayisation’ (sanwenhua 散文化) of fiction, or the effort to incorporate elements of the essay and other genres into fiction. In this paper, I will examine examples of wartime long-length works with loose cross-generic forms, split narrative perspectives, and unfinished plots, which I argue convey wartime authors’ uncertainties about the direction of history. In doing so, I shed light on previously understudied trends in wartime literature and on the development of the Chinese novel.
Authors:
Carolyn FitzGerald, Auburn University, United States
About the Presenter(s)
Dr Carolyn FitzGerald is a University Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer at Auburn University in United States
See this presentation on the full schedule – Saturday Schedule
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