Please note that the below seminar is cancelled.
2019/2020 School of Chinese Seminar
The Pidgin Warrior: Zhang Tianyi’s Satire
David N.C. Hull (Washington College, Maryland)
November 15, 2019 (Friday); 4:30-6:00pm
Room 730, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus
Language: English
Satire is a most frustrating topic for analysis, not because it is rare or unimportant, but because there are so few things about satire that can be said with consistent confidence. Satire, more than most narrative devices, makes the reader explicitly central to the meaning of the text. This of course, only adds to the contention of meaning.
Set in decadent, cosmopolitan Shanghai at the onset of the Japanese invasion, Zhang Tianyi’s (張天翼 1906-1985) 1936 novel The Pidgin Warrior (洋涇浜奇俠) provides images of nationalism, modernism, and globalism for ridicule in ways that still resonate today.
David N.C. Hull is an Assistant Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. Among his translations are Zhang Tianyi’s novel The Pidgin Warrior and the PEN Award winning Waverings by Mao Dun.
ALL ARE WELCOME!