Leaving the World to Enter the World. Han Shaogong and Chinese Root-Seeking Literature

Mark Leenhouts

Leaving the World to Enter the World focuses on the fictional and theoretical writings of Han Shaogong, one of the most striking voices in contemporary Chinese literature. Han played a central role in the ‘root-seeking’ trend that dominated the literary scene of the People’s Republic of China in the mid-1980s. His work has won him acclaim from a wide range of readers in Chinese and other languages, a highlight being the 1996 novel Dictionary of Maqiao.
Critics have labeled Han the leader of a nationalist movement in search of a cultural identity. Mark Leenhouts shows that Han’s role is much more complex, demonstrating that his literary practice is a highly individual, creative continuation of Chinese tradition. Han’s personal style transcends the narrow boundaries of root-seeking as it has been portrayed in literary histories and criticism to date.
This rectification of the one-sided image of Han Shaogong has profound implications for the significance of root-seeking literature, and for questions of tradition and modernity that have been among the most hotly debated topics in Chinese literary, intellectual and political thought throughout the 20^th century.
Leaving the World to Enter the World does justice to the individuality of the literary author by taking the intrinsic structure of the literary work as its starting point. Leenhouts’ close textual analysis, as intelligent and pragmatic as it is sensitive, will help counterbalance the socio-political orientation typical of much recent research. By seeing Han Shaogong as a writer rather than a mouthpiece of historical forces, this book opens up new perspectives for enjoying his literary mastery.
(In English, 158 pp. ill.)

Mark Leenhouts (1969) is a sinologist trained at the Universities of Leiden and Paris VII. An accomplished translator and literary critic, he is among the founding editors of Het trage vuur, a journal of Chinese literature in Dutch translation.

'Leenhoust brief book on the whole has great merits, patiently disentangling the many complexities of cultural and literary root seeking, while simultaneously, by way of textual analysis, giving fresh emphasis to familiar critical interpretations. (...) the study provides very useful reference points for students and scholars of Chinese literature.'  -  Cosima Bruno in: The China Quarterly (2005).

The Invention of a Discourse. Woman's Poetry from Contemporary China

Jeanne Hong Zhang

Women’s poetry is a critical part of the contemporary Chinese literary landscape. Its impact and its diversity have attracted much attention in China and elsewhere. The Invention of a Discourse is the first book-length study that relates women poets to one another in terms of shared experience, subject matter, poetic technique and language. It also highlights interfaces with their international surroundings. The book diversifies and enriches current scholarship on Chinese and comparative literature from textual, intertextual and contextual perspectives.
The author presents case studies of works by prominent women poets from the 1980s and 1990s on five interrelated themes—the female body, the mirror, night, death and taking flight. Building on a framework drawn from literary theory and gender studies, she identifies textual evidence to demonstrate how contemporary Chinese women poets have invented a discourse of their own that involves the creative emulation of role models, most notably Sylvia Plath and Zhai Yongming. This book examines the ways in which Chinese women poets channel gender experience into creativity, and shows the role that individual poetics can play in determining the orientation of a national poetics.

Jeanne Hong Zhang (Zhang Xiaohong) studied English and American literature, applied linguistics and Chinese literature at Hunan University, Hunan Normal University and Leiden University. She is senior lecturer in comparative literature at Shenzhen University.
(In English, 304 pp.)

Review of The Invention of a discourse

'Zhang clearly demonstrates that the analysis in this book is informed by a formidable knowledge of both Chinese and Western literature. (...) the result is a book that is rich in its findings. Jeanne Hong Zhang's book will undoubtedly find itself on the reading lists of every modern and contemporary Chinese literature course.' Mabel Lee in: The China Journal, issue 55 (Jan. 2006)

Heroes and Heritage. The Protagonist in Indian Literature and Film

Theo Damsteegt (ed.)

An analysis of the role of the protagonist is central to text interpretation. Providing examples of such analyses, the fourteen articles in this volume deal with the protagonist in mainly 20th century North Indian films and literary texts. Basically, they aim to answer two questions: what techniques have been used by the author (or director) to present a specific protagonist, and what ideas or even ideology may have inspired the author to create that character. The latter question, concerning the view of life or society that has consciously or unconsciously influenced the creator of a South Asian text or film, has occasionally been investigated in the past, too, but here answers are argued on the basis of an analysis of narrative techniques rather than an intuitive approach.
Besides a historical survey of protagonists in 20th century Hindi literature, this volume offers detailed discussions of a wide variety of 'heroes' - among them children, aged men, courtesans, women fighting for Independence, and Urdu poets.
The literary texts analysed here belong to various genres (novel, short story, drama, poetry), and the papers demonstrate several analytical methods, such as narratology, film analysis, feminist literary analysis, and postcolonial studies.
(In English, 258 pp.)

Another book by Damsteegt

Metamorphosen des Epos. Sirat al-Mugahidin (Sirat al-Amira Dat al Himma) zwischen Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit

Claudia Ott

Am Fuss der Kutubiyya-Moschee in Marrakesch/Marokko hielt bis zum Jahr 2000 der Erzähler Si Mloud seine öffentlichen Vorlesungen arabischer Epen ab. Eines der Werke seines Repertoires war die Sirat al-Mugahidin, auch unter dem Namen der Protagonistin, der frommen Kämpferin Dat al-Himma, bekannt. Dieses monumentale Epos - seine Ausgaben umfassen bis zu 81 Bände – gehört zu den ältesten Vertretern der arabischen Epik (sira ša`biyya), die bereits im 12. Jahrhundert erwähnt werden und deren erhaltene Handschriften aus der Zeit um 1400 stammen. Leser, Erzähler, und Bibliotheksbesitzer haben diese Handschriften im Lauf der Jahrhunderte immer wieder umgestaltet und ihre Spuren darin hinterlassen.
Dieses Buch beleuchtet eine bedeutende Textgattung der populären arabischen Literatur und ihre Metamorphosen zwischen Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit.
(In German, 354 pp. incl. figs., photogr., bibl.)

‘Ott has laid the philogical-textological foundations for a whole new branch of scholarship. Similarly to the scholarship of Homer or the Banu Hilal, it is to be hoped that a Sirat al-Amira Dat al-Himma scholarship will arise. As there is no doubt that the siras originate in oral epic, folklorists have to busy themselves with their study.' - Heda Jason in Fabula 46 (2005) Heft 1/2

Dargi Folktales. Oral stories from the Caucasus with an introduction to Dargi grammar

Helma van den Berg

Dargi folktalesis a collection of some thirty tales and anecdotes from the East Caucasus.
The texts were gathered during the early 1950s and 60s by Daghestanian scholars and represent traditional oral stories. As Daghestan borders the Arab and Anatolian world, we come across features common to the oral traditions of those areas, like the figure of Mullah Nasredin. Even now, oral stories remain a vivid part of Daghestanian literary life and serve as the basis for newly written works.
At the same time, the book presents the first grammatical sketch of Standard Dargi available to the Western linguistic public in a language other than Russian. This sketch is based on the texts which are given in the original orthography, a transliteration, interlinear glosses and a English translation. A Dargi-English glossary completes the volume. Dargi morphosyntax is typical for the Daghestanian branch of the East Caucasian language family. It has a rich suffixation on nouns and verbs, a large case inventory, ergative/absolutive case-marking, widespread use of non- finite subordination and a fairly consistent head-final word order.
(In English, 324 pp., incl. lex. and bibl.)

Helma van den Berg, one of the leading Western experts on Daghestanian languages, passed away in Derbent (Daghestan, Russia) on 11 November 2003. Helma was only 38 years old.

Another book by Helma van den Berg

Poetry and Aids in Tanzania. Changing Metaphors and Metonymies in Haya Oral Traditions

Aldin Kaizilege Mutembei

Among the Haya society in Kagera, Tanzania, AIDS is a major problem as it is also in most other societies in Africa south of the Sahara. This study examines how the Haya people themselves are talking about AIDS using mainly poetry and songs as genres in oral tradition. It focuses more specifically on the way language is structured in these genres, and on the important role metaphors and metonymies play as indispensable literary aspects in Haya life. A mixture of socio-anthropological research approaches was used in the data collection in which oral poetry related to AIDS and to daily life produced between 1985 and 1998 was collected. For the analysis of the poetry three theories: metaphor, listener-response, and narratology have been used. The texts reflect fascinating changes in perception and attitudes concerning the AIDS crisis. During this period, there are also noticeable social changes to be found in the texts, one of which is that Haya women's negotiating power is more pronounced today than ever before. Another one is that once closed discourse about sex and sexuality is gradually being opened up through oral poetry. The study shows convincingly that oral tradition genres can be used to get better insights in people’s own reflections on AIDS.
(In English, 296 pp. incl. bibliography)