READINGS IN MODERN CHINESE POETRY: THE L

This seminar explores formal experimentation in modern and contemporary Chinese poetry, focusing on the long poem and the poetic sequence from the early twentieth century to the present. We examine how poets adapted extended forms to pursue historical reckonings, revitalize vernacular Chinese, sharpen the moral imagination, and articulate existential anguish or social protest in times of colonial warfare, political oppression, and human suffering. Tracing a century-long trajectory from the early experimental works of Liang Qichao and Lu Xun to contemporary masterpieces by Zhai Yongming, Bei Dao, Ouyang Jianghe, and others, the seminar investigates how extended poetic forms dialogue with visual art, multimedia, traditional landscape painting and so on to interrogate social transformation, political exile, environmental degradation, and global capitalism.

​​​​​​​Prerequisite: Reading knowledge of modern Chinese