Masters Thesis

Two tropes in Lu Xun's fiction: the sick man and the crowd

Lu Xun is considered the most influential modern Chinese writer, likened by many scholars to Tolstoy, Shakespeare and Goethe in both scope and cultural impact. The richness of Lu Xun's writing is predicated upon conflict, symbology and ambivalence. By incorporating both Chinese and European literature, as well as historical and biographical components of Lu Xun's life, this paper discusses two significant themes and characters in Lu Xun's early fiction: the sick man and the crowd. These two tropes figure prominently into his first four stories, all published between 1918 and 1920: "Diary of a Madman," "Medicine," "Tomorrow," and "Kong Yiji." These stories describe Lu Xun's struggle with modern manifestations of Neo-Confucian family and class morality, as well as the aspects of twentieth century modern China that are replacing these mores.

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