Contributor
Lee, Mabel, editor.
ImprintAmherst, New York : Cambria Press, [2018]
Descriptionx, 349 pages ; illustrations ; 24 cm.
Note:Introduction / Mabel Lee and Liu Jianmei -- Part I. Philosophical Inquiry -- Gao Xingjian: exemplifying a renaissance in today's world / Liu Zaifu -- An insignificant individual's defiance / Ming Jian -- The art of Gao Xingjian / Stephen Conlon -- Women and the dao in Gao Xingjian's works / Liu Jianmei -- Part II. Transdiscipline, Transgenre, Transmedia, and Transculture -- Nonattachment and Gao Xingjian's neutral actor / Gilbert Fong and Shelby Chan -- Gao Xingjian's search for a scenic dramaturgy and cinematic language in Song of the Night / Mary Mazzilli -- Tho Gao Xingjian exhibitions launched simultaneously in Brussels during 2015 / Liu Zaifu -- The mind's eye / Kwok-kan Tam -- Chan Buddhist scenography and Gao Xingjian's opera Snow in August / Jiang Hanyang -- Part III. Cine-Poems with Paintings, Dance, and Music -- Floods and forests / Megan Evans -- Bodies and paintings / Fiona Sze-Lorrain -- From theater to cine-poetry / Wah Guan Lim -- Inlaying images and seeing poetry / Yue Huanyu -- Part IV. Identifying and Defining the Self -- Gao Xingjian: autobiography, auto-fiction, and poetry / Noël Butrait -- Working through trauma in Gao Xingjian's One Man's Bible / Janet Shum -- Identity and creation / Michael Berry -- The authorial self in Gide's The Fruits of the Earth, Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet, and Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain / Pan Shuyang -- Epilogue. A Panoramic View of Gao Xingjian's World / Liu Zaifu.
Bibliography Note:Includes bibliographical references (pages 309-322) and index.
Note:When Gao Xingjian was proclaimed Nobel Laureate of Literature in 2000, it drew attention to his significant body of literary works that included a collection of short stories, titled Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather (1989), two autobiographical novels titled Soul Mountain (1990) and One Man's Bible (1999), as well as seventeen plays, three of which when performed in Beijing in the early 1980s, had turned him into an instant celebrity, not just in China, but internationally. His plays Absolute Signal (1982), Bus Stop (1983), and Wild Man (1986) were well known in the English- speaking world soon after their publication in Chinese. However, when his next play, The Other Shore (1986), was banned after a few rehearsals, he relocated to Paris in 1987. His play Escape (1990) about the 4 June 1989 military crackdown on student protesters in Tiananmen Square, resulted in a "virtual ban" on his writings, which could no longer be published, sold, or performed in the People's Republic of China. This meant that both the author and his works had been airbrushed out of existence, and that Gao Xingjian research would find it impossible to take root in China. Gao Xingjian and Transmedia Aesthetics demonstrates the extensive reach of Gao Xingjian's transcultural, transdisciplinary and transmedia explorations. Showcased here is the panoramic aesthetics of a polymath who has successfully personified modern-time renaissance by projecting the struggles of the individual's inner landscape into vivid images on stage, film, black-and-white paintings, and in the multilayered narrative expressions of fiction and poetry, even dance and music, to evoke a sense of sincerity and authenticity that penetrates a viewer/reader's heart. The volume is divided into four parts: philosophical inquiry; transdiscipline, transgenre, transculture; cine-poems with paintings, dance and music; and identifying and defining the self. The chapters probe different aspects of Gao Xingjian's work, bearing testimony to their diverse specializations.
