Ideology and Form in Yan Lianke¿s Fiction

<P>Xie analyzes three novels by the international award-winning Chinese writer Yan Lianke and investigates how his signature “mythorealist” form produces textual meanings that subvert the totalizing reality prescribed by literary realism.</P><P>The term mythorealism, which Yan coined to describe his own writing style, refers to a set of literary devices that incorporate both Chinese and Western literary elements while remaining primarily grounded in Chinese folk culture and literary tradition. In his use of mythorealism, carrying a burden of social critique that cannot allow itself to become “political,” Yan transcends the temporality and provinciality of immediate social events and transforms his potential socio-political commentaries into more diversified concerns for humanity, existential issues, and spiritual crisis. Xie identifies three modes of mythorealist narrative exemplified in Yan’s three novels: the <I>minjian </I>(folk) mode in <I>Dream of Ding Village</I>, the allusive mode in <I>Ballad, Hymn, Ode</I>, and the enigmatic mode in <I>The Four Books. </I>By positioning itself against an ambiguous articulation of social determinants of historical events that would perhaps be more straightforward in a purely realist text, each mode of mythorealism moves its narrative from the overt politicality of the subject matter to the existential riddle of negotiating an alternative reality.</P><P>A groundbreaking study of one of contemporary China’s most important authors that will be of great value to scholars and students of Chinese literature.</P>