It has been claimed that there is no way to understand the meaning of fengci in the modern term fengci xiaoshuo ("satiric fiction") through either its etymology or traditional generic distinction. Did concepts of satire in Chinese literary genres exist prior to modern times? And if such concepts did exist, were they expressed only in terms of fengci? This article traces traditional conceptions of satire to their origins and offers a selective overview of the development of the satiric mode in classical poetry and prose up to Tang times. Satire was in fact one of the dominant modes in early elite literature, and was justified by both moralistic and expressive theories. In ideal terms, this satire was supposed to be pedagogical and corrective, intended for the public good rather than private ends; it was supposed to adopt moderation, indirection, and a gentle tone. Of course, the reality sometimes departed quite far from the ideal. Some critics strongly criticized frivolous uses of wit and humor. They also worried that works that were supposedly admonitory may have inadvertently encouraged the reader to indulge in extravagant behavior, misconduct, and even vice: In the reading and composition of satire, moralistic hermeneutics reigned supreme. The dominant trend of moralistic criticism nudged writers in the di- rection of adopting an allegorical framework, and acculturated readers to look for hidden meanings.

Here I explore what I see as Kafka’s and Chuang-tzu's common “neighborhood” of parabolic or metaparabolic thinking/discourse. I interpret Kafka’s “Great Wall of China” and “Parable of Parables” and four stories (fables, parables) from the Chuang-tzu—the “untrodden ground,” “disappearing ground,” “useless oak tree” and “sacred turtle”—in the light of this metaparabolic dimension. This self-reflexive and indefinitely recursive discourse or textual strategy that “points beyond itself” by effectively cutting away its own ground or literal sense, thereby self-destructing, is closely tied, in both Kafka and Chuang-tzu, to the praxis of an “unlimited” thinking/saying, which again is the praxis of the “use of uselessness.” That is, the uselessness of the most abstract or (logically) “limitless” thinking is both ironically contrasted and paradoxically identified with the most radically immanent sense of real-life suffering and the need to survive. Thus, in “becoming parable” as Kafka calls it, or in moving (flowing) over onto the “untrodden ground” in Chuang-tzu’s terms, we simultaneously become irrelevant to the “problem” of human existence and already “solve” it—by no longer, in a sense, seeing the difference between what is parable and what is not.

This essay discusses the pernicious practice of “bowdlerization,” or ideological altering (by both omitting and adding passages), of 20th-century Mainland Chinese fiction. First the historical parallel with the West is noted: just as in 19th-century Britain the “18th century's spirit of tolerance was replaced by a paternalistic attitude toward readers as fragile and easily corrupted innocents who would be grievously misled by heterodoxy or malevolence in literary works,” in Imperial China the censorship and bowdlerization of literature was “most extensive and sustained during the Qing dynasty, whose reign included all of the 19th century;” however, in the 20th century this situation has improved in the West while worsening in China. Several telling examples of the 20th-century Communist Party’s blatantly ideological bowdler-izing of important fictional texts by Zhu Lin and Wu Zuxiang are then discussed: in each case we are shown how the emotional and aesthetic integrity of the works has been violated. The conclusion: Western editors and translators must be more careful about choosing unexpurgated editions of texts for translation; that is, they must be more vigilant in avoiding the perpetuation of (ideologically) expurgated ones.

Here, in keeping with Owen's notion of the Chinese lyric as a “lovely science” rather than “human art,” as the “honest record of a particular process of perception and thought,” we are shown how the ancient mode of correlative, world-structuring thinking and in particular the “psychophysical” model of the I Ching guides, at a deep level, the patterning of poetic imagery. Textual examples drawn mainly from Juan Chi and secondarily from Hsieh Ling-yun show how specific images (“hidden dragon”) and dualities (“fire over water,” “mountain/wood,” “crane/swallow’) and their subtle, correlative values and symbolic connotations serve as a kind of (psychophysical, metaphysical) subtext for the poems themselves. In some cases an understanding of the I Ching subtexts would appear to be crucial, for a deeper and truer understanding of the poetry, taking into account also the poet’s own intentions.

Modern Chinese poetry exhibits evidence of a writing in profound crisis—a crisis both within the writing itself and about this writing in response to times of uncertain change. As the agent and the bearer of new aesthetic values, the modern Chinese poet unabashedly writes his troubled consciousness into the construction of a viable genre and the enunciation of a literary identity. Under this historical context, this paper treats Zhu Xiang (1904-1933) as a shining example of the dispossessed modern poet. Taking into account the poet's personal temperament, the author argues that the image of Zhu Xiang as a tragic poet, in art as well as in life, reflects the generic instability that governs the poem as well as the poet throughout the New Poetry movement. Zhu Xiang’s mythical suicide, therefore, crystallizes, in a symbolic way, the identity crisis heightened by the uncertain relationship between the poet, his poetry and the world.

In this interview the renowned African American critic Houston A. Baker, Jr. reflects upon his critical enterprise in the last thirty years: how he was trained to be a Victorianist but ended up as a scholar of African American literature and culture. He traces the impact of his bitter childhood experience in segregated Louisville, Kentucky, on his later intellectual development. In his assessment of African American critical industries since the sixties, Baker calls our attention to the contributions of the Black Aesthetic but laments the influence of careerism upon the current status of African American criticism. To clarify his own critical stance, Baker also talks in great detail about some of the major concerns that he has tried to lay out in his various publications. He closes the interview with an exploration of the history and politics of rap as a cultural form for black, urban youth.