THE VICISSITUDES OF SATIRE IN CONTEMPORARY CHINESE FICTION: GAO XIAOSHENG

My dissertation is a study of satire in the works of a contemporary Chinese writer, Gao Xiaosheng, against the broader background of modern and contemporary Chinese letters. By following the development of what has been a controversial form of literature, it offers a perspective for appreciating an important juncture in China's literary history under the liberalizing trend since the late 1970s. The study also presents a critical appreciation of an individual writer's works, and some theoretical insights and reflections on literature and the art of satire.;My dissertation begins with one chapter presenting issues central to satire. The second chapter offers an historical overview of satire in modern (1919-1949) and contemporary (1949 to the present) Chinese literature. My purpose here is to remind readers of the relativity of norms and parameters set for a literary style within specific cultural and historical circumstances and familiarize them with those norms and parameters associated with recent Chinese satire.;The remaining three chapters of my dissertation are a discussion of Gao Xiaosheng's use of satire. In the first, I discuss a series of stories which take a peasant as a naive central character. The next concerns stories with an allegorical flavor. The last is an analysis of a story with a highly intrusive narrator. Each of these allows for a different kind of satire and, in particular, a different degree of humor. In the conclusion to my study I emphasize the role of humor and other devices of indirection employed by Gao Xiaosheng in his satire as devices which seem to be essential to the continued presence of satire in contemporary Chinese literature.;Satire makes a particularly satisfying subject of research for understanding the contemporary Chinese literary scene. Since satire takes real and immediate targets as objects for ridicule or criticism, it announces itself as a socially involved form of literature. At the same time, as a literary style, it may be a highly refined and intellectual art, making clever use of devices such as irony, understatement, allusion, plot organization, and characterization to achieve its effect. Satire is, therefore, a form of literature where the demands of art and life or individual and society meet. For the past fifty years, the central issues in the development of a socialist literature in China have revolved around the proper balance of just these conflicting elements. Thus, satire has acted as a form which incorporates important issues of literary theory for that country.