Free prose

Presentation

Inheriting a long literary tradition, free prose or sanwen (a term often rendered as "essay" or "literary prose") has become one of the four major genres of Chinese literature in modern times, alongside poetry, the novel and drama. Practiced from time immemorial by a multitude of writers, it constitutes a vast and highly complex field, and remains a genre little translated or studied abroad. The present book is intended as an introduction to some of the problematics of modern sanwen.

Through a series of case studies spanning, chronologically, from Lu Xun to Yan Lianke and Mu Xin, via Deng Tuo, Ba Jin or Wang Xiaobo, it deals with different types of literary prose, including the polemical essay or zawen, and addresses various theoretical issues: terminological and definitional difficulties, the effects produced by the text according to its mode of publication, the role of the essay as a political weapon and as testimony, the boundary between fictional and non-fictional literature.

Manager and Director

Angel Pino, sinologist and university professor, teaches in the Department of Chinese Studies at Bordeaux Montaigne University. He is head of the Centre d'études et de recherches sur l'Extrême-Orient (Plurielles, UR 24142) at the same institution. A specialist in Ba Jin, he has devoted numerous studies to the writer and translated several of his works.

Isabelle Rabut, Professor Emeritus at Inalco, is a specialist in modern and contemporary Chinese literature and Taiwanese literature. She has also translated the works of numerous writers, including Shen Congwen and Yu Hua.

280 pages
16 x 24 cm
Publication: 12/04/2023
ISBN: 9782858314188