Book

Chinese grammatology : script revolution and Chinese literary modernity, 1916-1958

Zhong, Yurou, author

Overview

\"In premodern East Asia, Chinese dominated everything from poetry to international trade, but by the early twentieth century, the ancient Chinese script began to be targeted as a roadblock to literacy, science, and democracy. Its abolition and replacement by the Latin alphabet came to be seen as a necessary condition of modernity. In China, both the Kuomintang Nationalist government in the 1920s and the Chinese Communist Party in the 1930s had active movements for replacing Chinese script with Latin characters. Nonetheless, when script reform was taken up by the party in 1958, simplification, not latinization, was instituted, and today Chinese script is alive and well. Yurou Zhong argues that just as broader international currents swept the latinization movement in, a postwar anti-imperial critique of Western ethnocentrism was responsible for the retention of the script. She also relates these political movements to the birth of modern Chinese literature and to similar movements in other--mostly socialist--countries at the time\"-- Provided by publisher.

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Subject: Chinese language Reform History 20th century. / Chinese language Writing History 20th century. / Chinese literature 20th century History and criticism. / Politics and literature China History 20th century.
• ISBN: 9780231192620, 0231192622, 9780231192637, 0231192630

Item info:

1 item available

1 item total in all locations

Holdings :

Call Number	Copies	Material	Location
PL1175.Z47 2019	1	BOOK	AUTOSTORE