Conditions of literary modernities: a conceptual history of Chinese literature, 1860-1925

This dissertation investigates the historical and discursive condition in which ?Chinese literature? (zhongguo wenxue) emerges as a concept indicating a world literary system. Contrary to existing scholarship that emphasizes ?the modern? in exploring Chinese literary modernism but sees ?Chinese literature? as a given and ahistorical concept, my work explores the compound itself, revealing how it b…