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Breaking with the Past: Memory, Mourning, and Hope in Lu Xun's Writing

Tao, Jeanne
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1392118866

Abstract Details

2005, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, East Asian Languages and Literatures.
Much of Lu Xun’s creative writing often deals with trauma, loss, and problems of memory, and as such should be analyzed using theories on memory and trauma. This thesis examines selected short stories, reminiscences, and prose poems from Lu Xun’s oeuvre that present and attempt to resolve problems of memory faced by May Fourth intellectuals who prescribe, or at least experience, a break with the past and tradition in order to modernize China and ensure its survival as a modem nation. As a result of this break with the past and the imposition of the dichotomy of tradition and modernity, what Richard Terdiman terms a “crisis of memory" can be observed in the literature of Lu Xun. This memory crisis manifests itself in a focus on lapses and excesses of memory—in particular an obsessive preoccupation with the past (especially in nostalgic accounts of an idyllic childhood), and expressions of fear and anxiety about being caught between a demonized past and a bleak future. Through readings in light of psychoanalytic theory and work on memory and trauma, I show how these symptoms resemble responses to trauma and how Lu Xun’s creative writings attempt to grieve multiple personal and national losses and lacks. In his struggle to effect social change through writing, Lu Xun must first address the paralyzing disillusionment with the past and present that characterizes the intellectual mood of early twentieth-century China, in order to find the energy to take action for the future. The “working through” of loss and grief attempted by the works analyzed here may facilitate action toward social transformation, yet this necessary mourning process falters in a climate of what Lin Yu-sheng calls radical antitraditionalism, when “who we have been” must be repudiated to become “who we should be.” This agonizing imperative lies beneath much of Lu Xun’s writing, affecting the possibility of mourning properly for loss and, therefore, the possibility of hope for the future. This thesis highlights three major problems resulting from a rejection of the past/tradition, observed in selected works from three different genres of Lu Xun’s writing—nostalgia and regression into the past in short stories, anxiety over “in-between-ness” expressed in prose poetry, and the construction of memory and identity to counteract trauma in autobiographical reminiscences. I argue that Lu Xun’s preoccupation with memory and the past motivated him to write in order to “get over” the traumatizing effects of the Confucian tradition in China. In dealing with the impulse to nostalgia and the desire to return to a lost Real, I suggest that Lu Xun began to incorporate some parts of an idealized past into a vision for the future. Basing a vision of the future on nostalgic images of an idealized childhood paradise, however, undermines the possibility for hope, because the “lost” past may not ever be regained in a perfect future.
Kirk A. Denton (Advisor)
Mark Bender (Committee Member)
116 p.
Asian Literature; Asian Studies

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Tao, J. (2005). Breaking with the Past: Memory, Mourning, and Hope in Lu Xun's Writing [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1392118866

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Tao, Jeanne. Breaking with the Past: Memory, Mourning, and Hope in Lu Xun's Writing. 2005. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1392118866.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Tao, Jeanne. "Breaking with the Past: Memory, Mourning, and Hope in Lu Xun's Writing." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2005. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1392118866

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1392118866
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© 2005, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.