Chinese grammatology script revolution and Chinese literary modernity, 1916-1958
Zhong, Yurou
Chinese grammatology script revolution and Chinese literary modernity, 1916-1958 Yurou Zhong - New York Columbia University Press 2019. - 1 online resource (xii, 279 pages) illustrations
Introduction: Voiceless China and its phonocentric turn -- The beginning and the end of alphabetic universalism -- Phonocentric dialectics -- "Can subaltern workers write?" -- "Reinventing children" -- Toward a Chinese grammatology -- Epilogue: The last custodian
"In premodern East Asia, Chinese dominated everything from poetry to international trade, but by the early twentieth century, the ancient Chinese script began to be targeted as a roadblock to literacy, science, and democracy. Its abolition and replacement by the Latin alphabet came to be seen as a necessary condition of modernity. In China, both the Kuomintang Nationalist government in the 1920s and the Chinese Communist Party in the 1930s had active movements for replacing Chinese script with Latin characters. Nonetheless, when script reform was taken up by the party in 1958, simplification, not latinization, was instituted, and today Chinese script is alive and well. Yurou Zhong argues that just as broader international currents swept the latinization movement in, a postwar anti-imperial critique of Western ethnocentrism was responsible for the retention of the script. She also relates these political movements to the birth of modern Chinese literature and to similar movements in other--mostly socialist--countries at the time"--
9780231549899 9780231192637
2019018858
Chinese language--Reform--History--20th century.
Chinese language--Writing--History--20th century.
Chinese literature--History and criticism.--20th century
Politics and literature--History--China--20th century.
Electronic Books.
PL1175 / .C456 2019
Chinese grammatology script revolution and Chinese literary modernity, 1916-1958 Yurou Zhong - New York Columbia University Press 2019. - 1 online resource (xii, 279 pages) illustrations
Introduction: Voiceless China and its phonocentric turn -- The beginning and the end of alphabetic universalism -- Phonocentric dialectics -- "Can subaltern workers write?" -- "Reinventing children" -- Toward a Chinese grammatology -- Epilogue: The last custodian
"In premodern East Asia, Chinese dominated everything from poetry to international trade, but by the early twentieth century, the ancient Chinese script began to be targeted as a roadblock to literacy, science, and democracy. Its abolition and replacement by the Latin alphabet came to be seen as a necessary condition of modernity. In China, both the Kuomintang Nationalist government in the 1920s and the Chinese Communist Party in the 1930s had active movements for replacing Chinese script with Latin characters. Nonetheless, when script reform was taken up by the party in 1958, simplification, not latinization, was instituted, and today Chinese script is alive and well. Yurou Zhong argues that just as broader international currents swept the latinization movement in, a postwar anti-imperial critique of Western ethnocentrism was responsible for the retention of the script. She also relates these political movements to the birth of modern Chinese literature and to similar movements in other--mostly socialist--countries at the time"--
9780231549899 9780231192637
2019018858
Chinese language--Reform--History--20th century.
Chinese language--Writing--History--20th century.
Chinese literature--History and criticism.--20th century
Politics and literature--History--China--20th century.
Electronic Books.
PL1175 / .C456 2019