By bringing energetic questioning and immense erudition to bear on lyricism, Wang succeeds in throwing a brilliant new light onto crucial aspects of modern Chinese experience in ways that demand a reconfiguration of our understanding. No other book provides such a rigorous, thoughtful, and stimulating encounter with the aesthetic choices of practitioners across the arts and the ongoing relevance of ... Read moreaesthetic questions for contemporary concerns.
Susan Daruvala, Cambridge University Wang moves with ease and flair from one discipline to another as he delineates the complex dynamics of the evolving cultural lyricism in mid-twentieth century China. No other published book in the field of Chinese literary studies can rival this one in breadth, depth, and goals.
Zong-Qi Cai, author of How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology This is fascinating, ground-founding work. With erudition, insights, meticulous research, and magisterial assuredness, David Der-wei Wang has written a grand book that will open ways for future scholars. The publication of this book might alter the landscape of Chinese literary and cultural studies.
Ha Jin, author of Nanjing Requiem Lyricism, or shuqing, is here developed like a lost negative from China's hard twentieth century. Repeatedly repressed, it cannot, Wang shows, be conclusively overwritten. This book disturbs large areas of canon and consensus. It deserves a long future.
Haun Saussy, University of Chicago With The Lyrical in Epic Time, David Der-wei Wang has firmly cemented his reputation as the world's leading scholar of modern Chinese literature and culture. In addition to his well-known ability to produce breath-takingly exciting, original, and enthusiastic readings of literary works, he has included in this new book his equally authoritative and inspiring views on works of film, painting, music, and calligraphy. Tying all these together is a compelling argument about the significance of the lyrical tradition, so often overlooked in previous scholarship of the grand narratives of Chinese modernity. The Lyrical in Epic Time is the logical continuation of Wang's earlier work on the 'repressed modernities' of Chinese culture. Once again, he has succeeded in pointing the way towards new materials, new approaches, and new forms of appreciating creative work from the Sinophone world.
Michel Hockx, SOAS, University of London A bold, persuasive interpretation of the history of modern Chinese literature... Highly recommended. Choice Show Less