Realism

Anderson’s book is very inspiring in that he delineates in details the development of the so-called “realism” in the first part of last century– from the very beginning when the concept of “realism” was introduced to Chinese modern literature and increasingly became a hot issue either to the literary creations or to their critiques, along with numerous debates about the interpretation of the concept and the practice of the genre according to different political situations, finally to Mao’s 1942 “Talks at the Yan’an Forum” where he addressed the issue of national forms and established a orthodoxy of opinion about the political function of literature. But we cannot help but notice that the concept of “realism”, which Anderson took for granted from western literature and employed as a genre to compare with its Chinese counterpart, is too simplified in his usage. “Realism,” as he defined, “is a fundamentally epistemological exercise, which involves testing the capacity of language to capture and communicate the Real.” But to what extent “the Real” could be captured and communicated in the literary works? What is “the Real”?

As Anderson traces back and compared the Chinese and western tradition, he suggests that Chinese literature has no “realism” to the west definition. The reason, firstly, as we all know, is the different ways of the representation or reflection of the outside world (Chinese people used to integrate the outside into their inner world and comprehend the world from the inside-- “Tian ren he yi,” while in the western tradition early from Aristotle the outside world is alienated and understood as a object awaiting for comprehension); secondly, as Anderson develops, is that the value of Chinese history and literature is not for their own sake. In other words, he stresses the intent of the author during his literary creation and takes it as a standard to investigate the “real” representations in the literary works. The “Real,” as we would discern from Anderson’s account,