The Emergence, Development, And Bifurcation Of Uyghur Gungga Poetry

In the mid-to late1980s, a group of young poets captured the attention of the Uyghur literarycommunity with their new ideas and their new ways of expressing thoughts and feelings. Their poems’difficulty and originality proved particularly attractive to younger readers. This new modernistmovement was a cause of concern, though, for older poets used to traditional modes of expression, andto describing the observable world. As a result, this new school of poetry became the center of one ofthe most vigorous debates in recent Uyghur literary history.Following the implementation of China’s Reform and Opening Policy, extensive contact andexchange between Chinese and Western literature, including twentieth century modernist literature,encouraged the proliferation on the Chinese literary scene of new genres, new literary ideas, and newliterary movements. As a constituent part of Chinese literature, Uyghur literature also gave expressionto these trends. Young Uyghur writers were introduced to modernist literature via two routes. The firstbrought the works of poets like Adonis and Mayakovsky to Uyghurs via translations into Arabic andthe Turkic languages of Central Asia. The second route by which modernism entered Uyghur literaturewas the work of Chinese modernist poets like Bei Dao and Shu Ting. The Chinese language ultimatelyformed the most important meeting point for Uyghur literature and Western modernist literature.The modernist, youth-led Uyghur poetic movement inspired by these influences soon came tobe known as the Gungga (hazy) school of poetry. From early on, though, the word Gungga has inmany ways been a catchall term for various modernist poetic tendencies, some of which differ greatlyfrom each other. Close inspection reveals that Gungga poems, while similar in form, in fact express abroad range of meanings and desires. These differences within the Gungga school comprise a majorfocus of this thesis.The preface consists of four sections, and will discuss the scope of the thesis, the relevance ofits subject matter, the research methods used herein, and the current state of research on the topic. Thefirst chapter, primarily introductory in nature, will briefly outline what I take to be the four majorfeatures of Gungga poetry.The second chapter focuses on one of the thesis’s two core topics, namely, the place of Gunggapoetry in Uyghur literary history. Since previous works have done much to illuminate the emergence ofGungga poetry in the mid-1980s and its development over the subsequent two decades, our primaryfocus here will be on the historical background of Gungga poetry, the conditions which allowed thismovement to flourish in China’s reform era, and the importance of authenticity as a touchstone inUyghur culture, as revealed in the debates surrounding the origins of Gungga poetry.The third chapter will turn to the thesis’s other main theme, the largely unexplored divisionbetween what I call here the "concrete" and the "symbolic" schools of Uyghur Gungga poetry. Takingthe prominent poet Exmetjan Osman as exemplary of the "symbolic" school, and Tahir Hamut, PerhatTursun, and Adil Tuniyaz as representative of the "concrete" school, this chapter argues that divisionsbetween different schools of Gungga poetry are as substantial as those between traditionalist poemsand Gungga poems as a whole. The conclusion will reprise the above themes in considering current trends in Gungga poetry, aswell as the future of the movement. A few suggestions will also be put forth for fruitful new directionsin research on Gungga poetry.