Modernist Poetics in China

This book examines organizations of consumeristeconomics, which developedat the turn of the twentieth century in the West and at the turn of the twenty-first century in China, in relation to modernist poetics. Consumerist economics include the artificial "person" of the corporation, the vertical integration of production, and consumption based upon desire as well as necessity.Thisbook assumes that poetics can be understood as a theory in practice of how a world works. Tracing the relation of economics to poetics, the book analyzes the impersonality of indirect discourse in Qian Zhongshuand James Joyce; the impressionist discourses of Mang Ke and Ezra Pound; and discursive difficulty in Mo Yanand William Faulkner.Bringing together two notably distinct cultures and traditions,this bookallows us to comprehend modernism as a theory in practice of lived experiencein cultures organized around consumption.