Poetics of Biography: 2

Some Calligraphy by the Memoirist Mao Xiang 冒襄

Yang Zhengrun 杨正润. Xiandai zhuanji xue 现代传记学 (A Modern Poetics of Biography). Nanjing, China: Nanjing University Press, May 2009.A very long work that tries to map out both a canon and theoretical issues within "biographical literature" 传记文学 in two compared contexts, Chinese and Western.

I wrote a bit about the introduction in fall of 2009, but I didn't make it back to this volume, even though it sat right on my desk!

A few thoughts on what's going on in this volume:


Yesterday I read through the first section of chapter 8, 亚自传, which I take to mean "Asian Autobiography," although I feel I may have that term wrong. More to come on that. The first section of this chapter is on "memoires" 回忆录, in which Prof. Yang outlines the why readers value memoirs uniquely, distinct from biographies and autobiographies, for the memoir's own freer structure comprised of anecdote. Autobiographies should aim for something with strong unity, but memoirists need not have any such worry, though they do at times craft strongly unified works that blur the line between autobiography and biography.

The whole section is full of rather simple ideas, but they make for good Chinese reading, especially as they introduce an unusual list of memoirs that helps Prof. Yang outline the types. My notes have a fairly complete list, though many of the Russian and other foreign names are obscure to me. I was delighted to see Kruschev contrasted to Zhou Zuoren, the one with an interest in historical record, the other on the self. This self <-> history dichotomy is the most striking tension that unites the section. I wonder if we might call it the key paradox of Chinese thought on biography (we follow Wu Pei-yi in this, of course).

Bibliography of Memoirs Mentioned in Chapter 8, Section 1:

Mao Xiang 冒襄. Ying mei an yi yu 影梅庵忆语 [Shadow-plum hut reminiscences]. Beijing: Foreign Languages Education and Research Press, 2009. One of four named examples of Ming and Qing memoir that present the details of married life, elements of the setting and other details. These and three other Ming memoir are said to have high-falutin language, as compared to the plainer Qing work of Shen Fu.