Lovell, Julia (2006) The politics of cultural capital: China’s quest for a Nobel Prize in literature. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 9780824829629.
Abstract
Description from the publisher's website: In the 1980s China’s politicians, writers, and academics began to raise an increasingly urgent question: why had a Chinese writer never won a Nobel Prize for literature? Promoted to the level of official policy issue and national complex, Nobel anxiety generated articles, conferences, and official delegations to Sweden. Exiled writer Gao Xingjian’s win in 2000 failed to satisfactorily end the matter, and the controversy surrounding the Nobel committee’s choice has continued to simmer. Julia Lovell’s comprehensive study of China’s obsession spans the twentieth century and taps directly into the key themes of modern Chinese culture: national identity, international status, and the relationship between intellectuals and politics. The intellectual preoccupation with the Nobel literature prize expresses tensions inherent in China’s move toward a global culture after the collapse of the Confucian world-view at the start of the twentieth century, and particularly since China’s re-entry into the world economy in the post-Mao era. Attitudes toward the prize reveal the same contradictory mix of admiration, resentment, and anxiety that intellectuals and writers have long felt toward Western values as they struggled to shape a modern Chinese identity. In short, the Nobel complex reveals the pressure points in an intellectual community not entirely sure of itself. Making use of extensive original research, including interviews with leading contemporary Chinese authors and critics, The Politics of Cultural Capital is a comprehensive, up-to-date treatment of an issue that cuts to the heart of modern and contemporary Chinese thought and culture. It will be essential reading for scholars of modern Chinese literature and culture, globalization, post-colonialism, and comparative and world literature. Chapter one: Introduction: Diagnosing the Complex. Chapter two: The Nobel Prize for Literature: Philosophy and Practice. Chapter three: Ideas of Authorship and the Nobel Prize in China, 1900–1976. Chapter four: China’s Search for a Nobel Prize in Literature, 1979–2000. Chapter five: The Nobel Prize, 2000.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Book |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | Julia Lovell was research fellow in Chinese literature and history at Queen’s College, Cambridge at the time of publication. The introduction is available fom the publisher's website at http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/books/lovell-intro.pdf |
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Historical Studies |
| Depositing User: | Sandra Plummer |
| Date Deposited: | 29 Jul 2008 14:48 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 16:48 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/718 |
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