Home>Course>[CHES5103] Selected Themes on Chinese Literature>

This course will study a body of Chinese fictional works with a focus on the depiction of crime in its many facets: the perpetrator, the victim, the investigator, the commitment of the crime, the investigation, the punishment, the social and historical settings in which the crime occurs and the material and psychological circumstances surrounding it. It will adopt a loosely chronological approach, beginning with the treatment of crime in literature in the premodern period, through various stages in the twentieth century and ending with the contemporary period. It focuses mainly on the development in the Chinese mainland but will also touch upon that in Hong Kong and the other areas of the Sinophone world.

Organizational meeting; Defining the Terms

The Game of Crime

Pre-20^th Century Literary Depiction of Crime: Moral and Cosmic Dimensions

The Crime Genre as Entertainment and Scientific Textbook

The Criminal, the Counter-revolutionary

The Spy and the Mole

Procedural

Noir, Hard-boiled detective, Femme Fatale

Revenge

The Chinese Detective in the West I

The Chinese Detective in the West II