Beyond the Iron House: Ecological Thinking in Modern Chinese Literature, 1917-1937
- ISBN-10
- 1321213093
- ISBN-13
- 9781321213096
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2014
- Author
- Christopher Karlin Tong
Description
Beyond the Iron House: Ecological Thinking in Modern Chinese Literature, 1917-1937 argues that ecological thinking is at the epicenter of Chinese modernity. Analyzing how modern Chinese writers and intellectuals engage the environment, nonhumans, and anthropocentrism, the dissertation shows how the literary and cultural productions of Republican China contributed to not only the rise of the human, but also the birth of the nonhuman. From 1917 to 1937--between the New Culture movement and the Nanjing Massacre--the most important writers, poets, thinkers, and filmmakers of modern China managed to do what few of their Western contemporaries did in the early 20th century: they viewed modernity as coexisting with the nonhuman world. The dissertation not only introduces ecological criticism as a method to the study of modern Chinese literature, but also brings China studies in closer dialogue with the environmental humanities at large.
