Assignment
Pick up TWO of the following questions
1. What does it mean to be in love? We've seen the changing responses to this question from China's May Fourth period of the early twentieth-century to its post-socialist era. Discuss literary and/or cinematic representations of various love scenarios from initial meeting to final ending("Regret for the Past," "The Tunnel," "And the Rain Patters on," etc.). How do the protagonists in the texts being discussed similarly or differently position themselves with respect to their attitudes towards conventional views? Also articulate how these love scenarios are embodiments of wider social and cultural transformations.
2. "Paradox" in literary representation denotes a kind of "competing perspectives" (perspectives that undermine each other) or "dual logic" (the logic of a narrative that becomes revealing on one level is challenged or even reversed by the logic of another). Discuss three works in which the narrative turns out to threaten its surface meaning or prescriptive intent. In each case, consider the importance of narrative voices, narrative perspectives, and other narrative devices.
3. Compare and discuss the employment of the first-person narrative ("I-narration") in Lu Xun's "Madman's Diary" (modernist fiction), Shi Zhicun's "One Evening in the Rainy Season" (School of New Perceptionists), and Zhao Shuli's "Registration" (revolutionary literature).