Studies in East-West Literary Relations

In this course we will read novels drawn from the British, American and Chinese traditions that experiment intensively with the representation of other minds, asking how these novelists sustain uncertainty as to the comprehension of fictional minds. Topics include Austen’s work with what later would be called free indirect discourse, James’ presentation of the restricted consciousness of a child, Woolf’s use of stream of consciousness, the interest of the sixteenth-century novel Plum in the Golden Vase in the exploration of sentiments withheld, and the 18 th -century Chinese novelist Cao Xueqin’s experimentation with interior dialogue.

Readers coming to pre-modern Chinese literature often assume to find a conception of character based in interiority and the narration of thought. This expectation arises not only from our reading of European literature from Austen to Woolf, but from the legacy of twentieth-century narratologists who have cast increasing sophistication in the representation of thought as the teleology of the trajectory of the novel. Pre-twentieth century Chinese fiction, however, does not move inexorably in the direction of a conception of character in which interiority is highlighted. We will pay particular attention to moments in pre-modern Chinese fiction that appear to correlate with narratological concepts such as free indirect discourse, and attempt to discern alternate derivations.

Primary texts include Jane Austen, Persuasion; Henry James, What Maisie Knew; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; the anonymous seventeenth-century Chinese novel Plum in the Golden Vase (Jin Ping Mei); Cao Xueqin, Story of the Stone (Hong lou meng)； short stories by Li Yu, Feng Menglong and Ling Mengchu. Critics include Peter Brooks, Sharon Cameron, Dorrit Cohn, Ann Banfield, Alex Woloch, and traditional Chinese commentators. All Chinese texts will be available in English translation.