Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
OK
The Heart of Time: Moral Agency in Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction (Harvard East Asian Monographs) Hardcover – October 31, 2006
Purchase options and add-ons
By examining how narrative strategies reinforce or contest deterministic paradigms, this work describes modern Chinese fiction's unique contribution to ethical and literary debates over the possibility for meaningful moral action. How does Chinese fiction express the desire for freedom as well as fears of attendant responsibilities and abuses? How does it depict struggles for and against freedom? How do the texts allow for or deny the possibility of freedom and agency? By analyzing discourses of agency and fatalism and the ethical import of narrative structures, the author explores how representations of determinism and moral responsibility changed over the twentieth century. She links these changes to representations of time and to enduring commitments to human-heartedness and social justice.
Although Chinese fiction may contain some of the most disconsolate pages in the twentieth century's long literature of disenchantment, it also bespeaks, Knight argues, a passion for freedom and moral responsibility. Responding to ongoing conflicts between the claims of modernity and the resources of past traditions, these stories and novels are often dominated by challenges to human agency. Yet read with sensitivity to traditional Chinese conceptions of moral experience, their testimony to both the promises of freedom and the failure of such promises opens new perspectives on moral agency.
- Print length306 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarvard University Asia Center
- Publication dateOctober 31, 2006
- Dimensions6.12 x 1 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-10067402267X
- ISBN-13978-0674022676
"Layla" by Colleen Hoover for $7.19
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover comes a novel that explores life after tragedy and the enduring spirit of love. | Learn more
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Harvard University Asia Center (October 31, 2006)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 306 pages
- ISBN-10 : 067402267X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0674022676
- Item Weight : 1.35 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.12 x 1 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #9,588,593 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,781 in Regional Geography
- #4,616 in Asian Literary History & Criticism
About the author
Sabina Knight is an author and translator best known for *Chinese Literature: A Very Short Introduction*. Her work on the politics of Chinese-English translation gained an audience following her defense of Chinese Nobel Laureate Mo Yan on NPR and in *The National Interest*. Born in London and educated in the United States, France, and Taiwan, Knight now lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she teaches at Smith College. She is also a research associate at Harvard University's Fairbank Center and a fellow in the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.
Customer reviews
5 star | 0% | |
4 star | 0% | |
3 star | 0% | |
2 star | 0% | |
1 star | 0% |
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon