Lu Xun’s heteromodal realism

Abstract

This article posits modern Chinese realism as heteromodal, capable of encompassing many modes of narration from a plurality of literary movements. Heteromodality results from the heterochronic Chinese importation of Western literary history, the simultaneous reception of what were originally successive historical periods. The fountainhead of heteromodal Chinese realism is Lu Xun’s 1918 “Diary of a Madman,” one of the first modern vernacular Chinese short stories. Though Lu Xun has long been considered a foundational writer of realism in China, critics have complicated this designation by pointing out his modernist or symbolist proclivities. This article redefines Lu Xun’s realism by enlarging the scope of inquiry beyond “Diary” itself to scrutinize its main Russian intertexts: Nikolai Gogol’s 1835 story “Diary of a Madman” and Leonid Andreev’s 1904 novella Red Laugh. Examining the elements that Lu Xun’s story cannibalizes from Russian intertexts, which have themselves defied straightforward categorizations such as realism, the article intervenes in long-standing discussions about the nature of realism in modern China and, more broadly, in recent conversations about peripheral realism.