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    Published : 2024-12-03
    Vol. 72 No. 9 (2024)

    Mythorealism 神实主义 of Yan Lianke 阎连科: In the Realm of Magical Realism, Grotesque Realism and the Inner Truth of Chinese Reality

    Lidia Kasarełło

    https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9206-6300

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rh24729.2

    Abstract

    This research paper is entirely devoted to the attempt to define and analyze the essence and distinctive features of a Chinese literary concept proposed by Yan Lianke (1958). He himself appears in the article in a dual role, once as the creator of many outstanding contemporary novels – including six translated into Polish between 2019 and 2023 (Dream of Ding Village, The Explosion Chronicles, The Four Books, Lenin’s Kisses, The Day the Sun Died, Heart Sutra) – and twice as the author of in-depth reflections on variations of realism and causality in literature (the book Faxian xiaoshuo). Yan Lianke’s considerations serve as a starting point and at the same time as a context for placing the phenomenon of mythorealism in the history of Chinese literature, both in the old novelistic tradition, in the stories of Lu Xun, and above all in the literature of the New Period (mainly xungen wenxue and Mo Yan). The analysis of the six novels shows that mythorealism is a kind of artistic vehicle that allows for the unveiling of “the inner truth” about the absurd and chaotic reality of contemporary China. Since this truth is concealed from rational recognition of “inner causality,” the later part of the article seeks familiar literary models and strategies to explain the complexity of Yan’s mythorealism. To this end, similarities and differences between mythorealism and its closest counterparts, magical realism and grotesque realism, are first discussed, followed by a section dedicated to para and meta-textuality as well as narrative and linguistic strategies, citing examples of the presence of elements of magical or grotesque realism in Yan’s mythorealistic novels. Interpretative explanations of the six novels, richly illustrated with examples, precede an extensive section on the ambiguity and role of self-censorship in Yan Lianke’s mythorealistic creation, which uses allusion, magic, grotesque, absurdity, and allegorical mode to deal with the trauma of the past and critique contemporary Chinese reality.

    Keywords:

    Yan Lianke, mythorealism, magical realism, grotesque realism, paratextuality, metatextuality, narrative and linguistic strategies, self-censorship



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    Roczniki Humanistyczne · ISSN 0035-7707 | eISSN 2544-5200 | DOI: 10.18290/rh
    © The Learned Society of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin & The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Faculty of Humanities


    Articles are licensed under a Creative Commons  Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)