Literary Dissent in Communist China / / Merle Goldman.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Asian Studies Backlist (2000-2014) eBook Package
• VerfasserIn: Goldman, Merle,
• Place / Publishing House: Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, , [2013]; ©1967
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Edition: Reprint 2014
• Language: English
• Series: Harvard East Asian Series ; 29
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (343 p.)

In modern China, literature has been regarded as a vehicle of political and idea logical dissent, a concept that has persisted under communism. This study exhaustively analyzes the conflict between the Chinese Communist party and the intellectuals, particularly the writers, in the crucial decades of the 1940's and 1950's. By singling out individual writers as egregious examples, party leaders, through a series of thought-control campaigns, have tried to mold intellectuals along orthodox doctrinal lines. But these same leaders, holding to the paradoxical conviction that personal initiative and creativity are necessary catalysts in the effort to construct a Communist state, have not wanted to stifle these qualities altogether. The result has been a pattern of permissiveness and pressure, as illustrated by the ill-fated "Hundred Flowers" movement and the subsequent return to a policy of harsh regimentation. In depicting the views, feelings, frustrations, and tragic fates of many individual intellectuals in the confrontation with an oppressive party bureaucracy, the author reveals, in an unprecedented way, the nature of the authoritarian society that has evolved in Communist China. Her study convincingly demonstrates that totalitarian rule has not guaranteed the subservience of the Chinese intelligentsia and, even more important, that the alienated, critical intellectual remains a significant and vital force.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- PREFACE -- CONTENTS -- PROFILES OF THE MAJOR PROTAGONISTS -- ABBREVIATIONS IN TEXT -- chapter one. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE PARTY AND REVOLUTIONARY WRITERS -- chapter two. LITERARY OPPOSITION DURING THE YENAN PERIOD -- chapter three. CONFLICTS BETWEEN LEFT-WING WRITERS IN THE KMT AREA AND THE CCP -- chapter four. RESUMPTION OF THOUGHT REFORM DRIVES IN 1948 -- chapter five. RE-EMERGENCE OF LITERARY FACTIONS, 1949–1952 -- chapter six. THE RELAXATION OF 1953 AND THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST FENG HSÜEH-FENG IN 1954 -- chapter seven. THE HU FENG CAMPAIGN OF 1955 -- chapter eight. WRITERS BLOOM IN THE HUNDRED FLOWERS MOVEMENT -- chapter nine. THE ANTIRIGHTIST DRIVE AGAINST THE WRITERS, 1957–1958 -- chapter ten. THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD AND HO CH’I-FANG -- chapter eleven. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LITERARY DISSENT -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- GLOSSARY -- INDEX -- Backmatter