Li Tuo, the editor of Beijing Literature and a well-known literary critic in China, will give a public lecture on "Market, Ideology and Literary Criticism of the 1990s in China," on April 9 at 4 p.m. in the Hale Science Building, room 270, at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The rapid development of a market economy in China in the 1990s has profoundly affected Chinese literature and literary criticism, according to Minglang Zhou, assistant professor in the department of East Asian languages and civilizations.
"Not only literature becomes a commodity for sale, but literary criticism is also forced to develop correspondingly a market-oriented ideology," he said.
"However, as part of a socialist ideology machine controlled by the government, literary criticism is required to support a socialist order, too. With two conflicting tasks in hand, literary criticism undergoes the ordeal of self-rupture and self-contradiction in the 1990s."
Tuo's lecture is the second in a series on "Literature in a Changing China," sponsored by the President's Funds for Humanities, the Center for Asian Studies, the Center for Humanities and the department of East Asian languages and civilizations. The talk will be delivered in Chinese, and English interpretation will be available.
EALC offers undergraduate and graduate programs in Chinese, and doctoral programs in Chinese in conjunction with a special program in Comparative Literature.