Between Historical Determinism аnd Contingency: Hu Shih’s Retrospective Text “Forced Up Liangshan” аnd Its Liminal Spaces Cover Image

Между историческия детерминизъм и случайността: ретроспективният текст на Ху Шъ „Да изкачиш по неволя Ляншан“ и неговите междинни пространства
Between Historical Determinism аnd Contingency: Hu Shih’s Retrospective Text “Forced Up Liangshan” аnd Its Liminal Spaces

Author(s): Veselin Karastoychev
Subject(s): Social Sciences, Language and Literature Studies, Essay|Book Review |Scientific Life, Culture and social structure
Published by: Великотърновски университет „Св. св. Кирил и Методий”
Keywords: Hu Shih; Literary Revolution; modern Chinese literature; wenyan–baihua transition

Summary/Abstract: The article reinterprets Hu Shih’s 1933 text “Forced Up Liangshan” as a liminal work mediating between historical determinism and contingency within the genealogy of modern Chinese literature. Positioned between canon-forming manifestos and personal narrative, the text challenges deterministic accounts of the Literary Revolution by emphasizing accidental circumstances, autobiographical agency, and the hybrid interplay of wenyan and baihua. Its extratextual placement and intratextual hybridity mark it as a threshold text that illuminates the emergence of modern literary subjectivity in early twentieth-century China.

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