Reflections on the Changes and Challenges in Chinese Fiction Studies

Ming Dong Gu, Rhodes College

          Studies of Chinese fiction have made significant advances in historical research, critical practice, and theoretical inquiry. What is notable in the advances is that scholars have gone beyond the traditional approaches to initiate a series of tacit shifts in emphasis. The first noticeable shift is one from a view of fiction as social documents like history that reflects or refracts social reality to a view of fiction as an art produced in particular social settings.  The second shift is one from a view of fiction as mere storytelling to a notion of fiction as a verbal art. The third shift is one from traditional literary approaches predicated on philological, historical, biographical, sociological methods to postmodern approaches informed by a variety of contemporary theories. In the field of modern Chinese fiction, these shifts have largely been completed. In the field of classical Chinese fiction, they are partially completed or are still in their initial stages. These shifts, whether completed or in the initial stage, have posed serious challenges and given us a great deal of food for thought. In a way, they have compelled us to consider whether studies of Chinese fiction are in the process of undergoing a paradigm shift in Thomas Kuhn’s conception. Personally, I think that we are in the process of completing a paradigm shift, which has the promise of pushing fiction study beyond the boundaries of Sinology to be merged with the international and interdisciplinary studies of narrative in the global context. A paradigm change has a great potential for broadening and deepening fiction studies, but it will also bring along challenges and anxieties. My presentation will examine the pros and cons for a paradigm change as well as its accompanying concerns or anxieties and suggests ways to deal with them. I venture to propose a paradigm that integrates traditional and postmodern approaches to prose fiction. I argue that a purely traditional approach or a purely postmodern approach seems to be wanting in one way or another, but a creative integration of both will complement each other and open new avenues to fiction studies.

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