Cultural Revolution Manuscripts: Unofficial Entertainment Fiction from 1970s China

This book explores handwritten entertainment fiction (shouchaoben wenxue) that circulated clandestinely during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, highlighting the creativity of readers-turned-copyists who modified stories and became secondary authors. It analyzes the production, circulation, and consumption of these texts, revealing how they achieved fruitful afterlives as re-published bestsellers or adaptations into comic books or movies.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 283 pages
Publication date: 07 October 2022
Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland AG

This captivating book delves into the realm of handwritten entertainment fiction (shouchaoben wenxue), a genre that flourished clandestinely during the tumultuous Chinese Cultural Revolution. Lena Henningsen, through meticulous analysis of exemplary stories and their diverse variations across different manuscript copies, unveils the remarkable creativity of these readers-turned-copyists. By engaging in the act of copying, these readers not only altered the narratives but also assumed the role of secondary authors, reflecting upon the realities of the Cultural Revolution. Through an exploration of actual reading practices as documented in autobiographical accounts and intertextual references within the stories, the book also situates manuscript fiction within the broader context of the long 1970s. Henningsen delves into the production, circulation, and consumption of these texts, highlighting continuities across the purported divide between the end of the Mao-era and the beginning of the reform period. Moreover, the book unveils the remarkable afterlives of these texts, as they were re-published as bestselling novels, adapted into comic books, or transformed into captivating movies, continuing to shape the minds of their audience and ignite the imaginations of the past.

Chapter 5 of this insightful work is graciously made available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via the link: link.springer.com.

Weight: 400g
Dimension: 210 x 148 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9783030733858
Edition number: 1st ed. 2021