Haiyan Xie is an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies in the School of Foreign Languages, Central China Normal University, China.

• Introduction: Contemporariness and Contemporary Chinese Literature Yan Lianke and Chinese Fiction in the 1980s and 1990s Minjian Writing and Contemporary Chinese Writers The Alternative Contemporariness of Yan Lianke Selection of Texts and Summary of Chapters Notes Bibliography 1 Mythorealism as Method The Unfilial Son of Realism The Paradox of Mythorealism Mythorealist Causality and Realities in the Western Perspective Ideology, Form, and the Representation of Reality in Mythorealism Notes Bibliography 2 AIDS and the Haunted Minjian: Negotiating the National Character in Dream of Ding Village Introduction The Fever as an Allegory of the National Character The Bystanders and the Ghost’s GazeHaunting Dreams and the Tainted Moral Defender Conclusion Notes Bibliography 3 Disenchanted Shijing and Spiritual Crisis: Allusive Sex and Illusive Disgust in Ballad, Hymn, Ode Introduction Ballad, Hymn, Ode, and Its Mytorealist Components The Desymbolized World and the Disenchanted Intellectuals The Indeterminacy of Sex and the Schizophrenic The Disgusting and the Dystopian Imagination of Spiritual Home Conclusion Notes Bibliography 4 Docile Body and Ethical Self: The Religious, the Grotesque, and the Mythological in The Four Books Introduction The Re-Ed District: An Absurdist Foucauldian Panopticon Rediscovering Haizi: A Religious Care for Self and Others Crazy Wheat and Cannibalism: Renegotiating Self through the Grotesque The Eastern Sisyphus: A Mythological Reconciliation between the Political and the Ethical Conclusion Notes Bibliography Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index