TY - BOOK ID - 29209565 TI - The monster that is history PY - 2004 SN - 0520238737 9780520238732 9780520231405 0520231406 9786612762949 0520937244 128276294X 1597349445 9780520937246 1417574011 9781417574018 9781597349444 PB - Berkeley University of California Press DB - UniCat KW - S16/0170 KW - S16/0195 KW - China: Literature and theatrical art--General works on modern literature KW - China: Literature and theatrical art--Thematic studies KW - Chinese fiction KW - Violence in literature. KW - Roman chinois KW - Violence dans la litteĢrature KW - History and criticism. KW - Histoire et critique KW - Violence in literature KW - History and criticism KW - 20th century. KW - ancient china. KW - asia scholars. KW - brutal history. KW - china. KW - chinese history. KW - chinese violence. KW - crime and punishment. KW - cultural violence. KW - decapitation. KW - discussion books. KW - enlightenment. KW - ethnic issues. KW - gender issues. KW - geopolitical change. KW - historians. KW - historical. KW - history of violence. KW - literary criticism. KW - literary critics. KW - literary landscape. KW - modernity. KW - monstrous history. KW - nonfiction. KW - politics. KW - rationality. KW - representation. KW - students and teachers. KW - suicide. KW - taowu. KW - textbooks. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:29209565 AB - In ancient China a monster called Taowu was known for both its vicious nature and its power to see the past and the future. Over the centuries Taowu underwent many incarnations until it became identifiable with history itself. Since the seventeenth century, fictive accounts of history have accommodated themselves to the monstrous nature of Taowu. Moving effortlessly across the entire twentieth-century literary landscape, David Der-wei Wang delineates the many meanings of Chinese violence and its literary manifestations. Taking into account the campaigns of violence and brutality that have rocked generations of Chinese-often in the name of enlightenment, rationality, and utopian plenitude-this book places its arguments along two related axes: history and representation, modernity and monstrosity. Wang considers modern Chinese history as a complex of geopolitical, ethnic, gendered, and personal articulations of bygone and ongoing events. His discussion ranges from the politics of decapitation to the poetics of suicide, and from the typology of hunger and starvation to the technology of crime and punishment. ER -