Body Irony and Identity: The Trauma Narrative in the Fiction of Wang Xiaobo Yu Hua and Mo Yan

Abstract

The thesis develops a three-dimensional theoretical framework of trauma, body and irony to study the novelistic writings of three writers—Wang Xiaobo, Yu Hua and Mo Yan—and how they utilise narratives of trauma in response to 20th-century China’s historical turbulence and identity crises. In the shadow of state violence, corporeal discipline and language oppression, trauma is framed as an institutional and transgenerational cultural system affecting perception and construction of self at great depths. This thesis argues that the three authors break away from the narrative line of scar literature, as largely defined by condemnation and lyricism, and reveal the complex mechanisms of violent history via corporeal depiction of the body and structural irony. The authors also present various logics for the reconstruction of identity. Wang Xiaobo uses ironical and absurdist language strategies to deconstruct political utopian language and salvage repressed corporeal desires and intellectual freedom; Yu Hua adopts an icy narrative tone to convey the obstinacy of endurance amid intolerable suffering, reestablishing a silent, ethical dignity; Mo Yan juxtaposes folk storytelling and corporeal metaphors, making the body the central location of trauma and forging an ontological space for cultural memory. All three authors create an interactive relationality between body and irony in the texts, and their literature becomes an important medium for revealing, breaking through and going beyond trauma. By means of close reading and cross-textual comparison, this thesis contends that the trauma narratives of these three authors not only enjoy aesthetic innovation but also contribute to scholarly discussions on subjectivity and trauma narratives in modern Chinese literature.