Shen congwen autobiography range
Shen congwen autobiography range chart...
The transformations of work and life: on Shen Congwen’s texts of self-explication
Isabelle Rabat
Charles A. Laughlin, tr.
Shen Congwen (1902—1988) was born into a military family in a remote area in western Hunan.
Shen congwen autobiography range
He was in the army and later engaged in literary creation and became a writer. Perhaps it is because of his unique path among modern Chinese writers1 that Shen Congwen maximizes the potential of the autobiographical form.
Congwen zizhnan (Congwen’s autobiography)2 recounts to us the first two decades of the authors life. Although autobiography does not appear to be as rare in non-Western cultures as one French critic has claimed,3 it is undeniable that this book is a rare example in Chinese autobiographical literature, because its documentary value does not detract from its poetry.
More curious still, Shen Congwen was deliberately vague, in some of his short stories and novellas, about defining the “I”: as the narrator, the protagonist, or even the author himse