Teaching modern Chinese literature to non-Chinese western readers: A critical review of Nobel Prize winner Gao Xingjian's novel 'Soul Mountain'.

摘要

Teaching modern Chinese literature to those raised outside of Chinese culture presents an arduous challenge to educators dedicated to this cause.; In this research paper I will examine the standing of modern Chinese literature in the context of world literature by approaching and presenting modern Chinese literature as a heterogeneous complexity with various cultural traditions and literary trends existing within it. I propose to bring the awareness of this dynamic literary diversity within modern Chinese literature to its Western readers in order to facilitate cross-cultural China-West literary communication and understanding by applying a reader-response approach in a cross-cultural context to teaching Gao Xingjian's novel Soul Mountain .; Two theoretical positions underlying cross-cultural studies, the Universalist and the Relativist, are reviewed, and theories behind a stage beyond the strict bifurcation of the previous two positions are discussed and recommended for the purpose of this paper. A literary analysis is performed on the novel Soul Mountain in terms of the five universal themes and three local Chinese cultural characteristics embedded within the novel, and a wide range of literary devices employed, including plot, character and setting. A reader-response approach to teaching literature is proposed and evaluated in a cross-cultural context. Based on this theoretical discussion, a six-step instructional model is designed for teaching the novel Soul Mountain in a cross-cultural classroom. Five units of sample lessons are provided at the end for demonstrating my proposed teaching methodology and instructional procedures in real classroom applications.; The thesis is concluded with the statement that Soul Mountain is indeed a piece of world literature with Chinese characteristics, and it can certainly be incorporated into the curriculum of teaching modern Chinese language and literature to the West successfully.