Reception of Lin Yutang in Mainland China, U.S., and Taiwan

Reception of Lin Yutang in Mainland China, U.S., and Taiwan is the first comparative study of the reception of Lin Yutang and his writing in Mainland China, the U.S., and Taiwan. Lin Yutang and his writing in these three regions have undergone constantly changing interpretations and reinterpretations up to the present day, and these multiple interpretations are not always mutually supplementary or complementary but often antagonistic and incompatible.

The study traces these changing receptions of Lin Yutang’s writing in each location and explores the political, literary, and cultural links between the three seemingly parallel threads. It asks two questions: What were the cultural and linguistic factors which led readers to interpret Lin Yutang and his works so differently over time and place? And what does the reception of Lin’s writing tell us about the relation between art and politics on the international scene? The multilingualism and multiculturalism so central to Lin’s writing give a global inflexion to his Chinese orientation. The dynamic relations between “Chinese-ness” and global artistic and social ideas in his writing create a space of uncertainty and the potential for multiple interpretive perspectives. This book argues that various twentieth-century political ideologies inform the reading formations which cast Lin as one kind of “Chinese” author or another. By examining the changing receptions of Lin’s works across different languages, cultures, and political ideologies, this book intends to reveal the intricate intertextualities and discursive interactions which make up different reading formations, that is, collective and situated ways of making sense of a mute text.

Lin’s diasporic position and his cross-cultural writings have challenged the cultural power of nation-based or single language-based literary histories and literary canons. This book offers archival research and critical reading suggesting a different, more transnational perspective on Lin’s writing and a comparative-intercultural approach to writing literary history.