On September 17th, the Confucius Institute of Vilnius University invited sinology students and anyone interested in Chinese literature to Dr. Honggeng Yuan lecture on the connections between Chinese gong‘an literature and Western detective.
Dr. Honggeng Yuan is a professor at the School of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Lanzhou University, China. Professor Yuan teaches the courses of Anglo-American literature, Chinese-English translation among others. He is the author of over 40 articles in the fields of Anglo-American literature and comparative literature. Prof. Yuan explores detectives and contemporary problems such as metafixation, the fusion of psychological fiction with the detective genre, modern judicial process, court-case Fiction, the revival of Chinese detective in the 1980s, panopticism, and "vision" in detective fiction.
While doing comparative analysis of Chinese court-case fiction (gong-an-xiao-shuo) and Western detective fiction, he came up with a conclusion that these genres share the commonality in the plot of unveiling mysteries and thus are categorized as identical type of fiction, trigger seemingly reasonable comparative studies based on illusory impressions. Dr.Yuan revisits the history of crime literature in general especially the origin of the court-case fiction. Drawing on the basic facts and cultural and literary backgrounds in which the two genres were grounded, he reflects on the terminology and the development of court-case fiction and detective fiction. Through a comprehensive yet detailed examination of court-case fiction and detective fiction, he delves into the comparability of these two genres of fiction and shares insights into their uniqueness and common misunderstandings in this area.
Specifically, he provides a discussion as to how the two genres, embodying nuanced themes and morals, are unique, in spite of the similarities in the construction of lurid and complicated plot, and intuitive and/or logical methods applied in the process of detection that eventually leads to a convincing solution of the case in question. He also notes that in this postmodern age, detective fiction is rapidly merging with other genres, including the vanished court-case fiction.
Prof. Yuan has translated the controversial work of Henry Miller Tropic of Cancer and D.M. Thomas The White Hotel into Chinese.
Many thanks to all who came and prof. Honggeng Yuan for a great lecture.
