Sigmund Freud and modern Chinese literature (1919--1949)

Freudian theory has significantly influenced twentieth-century thought in the West. But what does Freudian psychoanalysis mean to a non-Western culture? This thesis traces the historical reception of Sigmund Freud's ideas in China between 1919 and 1949 and examines their effect on Chinese literature. Freudian psychoanalysis was altered in the course of being translated and explained in China, and took on a new significance as a result of being grafted onto the country's own rich tradition of psychological explanation in science, folklore, and literature. Emphasizing the important ways in which the Chinese transformed Freudian theory rather than merely passively received it, the thesis argues that these transformations are not just misreadings or perversions but rather are significant interpretations and elaborations of Freud.; This study not only gives an overall view of the route of Freud's entrance into China, but also attends to the linguistic problems that arose, and continue to arise, in China's assimilation of Freud. It offers an interpretation of some major themes important both to Freudian psychoanalysis and to Chinese literary history: theories about artistic creativity, the Oedipus complex, and the meaning of dreams. In order to establish the far-reaching implications of Freudian literary theory for Chinese literature, it examines the importation and development of psychoanalytic criticism by professional psychologists and literary critics in China as well as its impact on a group of Chinese modernists known as "psychoanalytic novelists."; Although the vast quantity of materials by and about psychoanalysis in China precludes exhaustive investigation of them, this study covers a wide range of Chinese translations, popularizations, and critical materials about psychoanalysis as well as many fictional works from the period. It also combines original historical research with a sensitivity to the interpretive issues raised by both fictional and expository texts, foregrounding the implications of psychoanalysis for its own methodology.