Home>Course>[CHES5103] Selected Themes on Chinese Literature: The Crime Genre>CHES5103

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.

Week 1: Organizational meeting; Defining the Terms

Week 2: The Game of Crime

Week 3: Pre-20th Century Literary Depiction of Crime: Moral and Cosmic Dimensions

Week 4: The Crime Genre as Entertainment and Scientific Textbook

Week 5: The Criminal, the Counter-revolutionary

Week 6: The Spy and the Mole

Week 7: Procedural

Week 8: Noir, Hard-boiled detective, Femme Fatale

Week 9: Revenge

Week 10: Final Paper Consultation

Week 11: The Chinese Detective in the West

Week 12: Metaphysical Detective Story

Week 13: Summation