Westernization or Localization? The (Mis)reading of “the Tragic” in Modern Chinese Literary Discourse

Abstract

This paper examines the features and causal factors in constructing an idea of the tragic in modern Chinese literary discourse. It attempts at revisiting and reproducing the realities of misreading and variation upon modern Chinese introduction of the term “tragedy” (beiju) at different socio-historical periods, and has observed the interplay between two trends, namely, Westernization and localization, through the negotiation of “the tragic” into modern Chinese literary practice. These two trends have been integrated by a political and pragmatic perspective, which dominates the formation of a modern Chinese literary discourse on “the tragic”. This perspective offers both possibility and legitimacy for certain deliberate misreading, thus endows modern Chinese tragic tradition with unique features different from its Western models. This paper holds that modern Chinese intellectuals approached the idea of the tragic more at an instrumentalist level; they retained the connotation of the term in their attempt of Westernization, and altered and reconstructed the denotations of the term as their efforts of localization. For this reason, modern Chinese reading of “the tragic” is not so much as a pure passive acceptance as an active endeavor to deliberately misread this alien concept for the renovation of the then existing Chinese literary tradition.