邱貴芬 Worlding World Literature from the Literary Periphery Four Taiwanese Models

“Worlding” World Literature from the Literary Periphery Four Taiwanese Models
Author(s): Kuei-fen Chiu

Source: Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Vol. 30, No. 1, Special Issue on Chinese
Literature as World Literature (SPRING, 2018), pp. 13-41
Published by: Foreign Language Publications
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26588540
Accessed: 06-09-2021 13:17 UTC
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“Worlding” World Literature
from the Literary Periphery: Four
Taiwanese Models†
Kuei-fen Chiu
“Worlding” World Literature from the Literary Periphery

This essay combines quantitative and qualitative approaches to analyze the †
This essay is based on a research project
sponsored by the Ministry of Technology
dynamics of cultural contestation when a literary work from the literary
and Social Sciences in Taiwan. I am
periphery embarks on a journey toward world literature. I examine four deeply grateful to Sun Ming-yi and
Professor Liao Yien from the Information
models of “worlding” world literature from peripheral Taiwan—the global
Science Department at National Chung
multicultural model (represented by Li Ang), the globalization model Hsing University for helping to generate
the two word clouds in this essay. I also
(Wu Ming-yi), the transnational model (Yang Mu), and the cross-medial
thank the two anonymous reviewers
model (Chen Li). “World literature” is understood here not as the sum for their constructive suggestions
for revision, and the poet Chen Li for
total of literatures in the world or the ever-expanding list of “canons” or
permission to use screenshots of his
“masterpieces,” but instead, in the words of David Damrosch (2003: 5), as website.
“a mode of circulation and of reading.” Rather than relying exclusively on

subjective interpretation, I propose a quantitative measurement scheme
of “international recognition indicators” to picture the active new life of
a literary work in its spatial circulation.
This analysis of world literature with a focus on the mode of circulation
is complemented by an analysis of the mode of reading with an eye
toward the normative dimension of world literature. “Worlding” is taken
here to mean the normative force of world literature—the opening that
Mo d e r n C h i n e se L i te ra tu re a n d C u l t ure • 1 3
creates meaningful relations with other beings (Cheah 2016: 6–12). The
global multicultural model of Li Ang shows how the intervention by the
literary center in the West creates opportunities for transgressive writers
such as Li Ang to voice themselves in both domestic and international
literary fields. The globalization model of Wu Ming-yi demonstrates how
the strategic integration of national and international resources, as well
as the blurring between serious and popular literature, carves a niche for
writers from the literary periphery. The transnational model of Yang Mu
highlights the meaning of world literature resources for writers from the
literary periphery. Finally, I argue that the cross-medial model of Chen Li
heralds a new horizon of networked literary production and dissemination,
pointing to the increasingly important role of multimedia and new media
in shaping the future of world literature in the late print era. My goal is
that this combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches will lead
to an understanding of how cultural contestation is played out on various
levels when peripheral literature participates in the constitution of world
literature-to-come. “Worlding” takes place at such moments when the
dynamics of cultural contestation opens up the world and world literature
is renewed.
World Literature as Mode of Circulation

A fundamental question at the heart of world literature studies is how
to delimit the realm of world literature. It no longer works to see the
concept of “world literature” as the sum total of literatures in the world
or as recognized literary canons from the West; nor is it satisfactory to
use the term to refer simply to literature from “the rest” (Damrosch 2003:
3–4; Moretti 2013: 45; D’haen/Domínguez/Thomsen 2013: xi; Shih 2015:
430). The spatial movement of a literary work beyond its culture of origin
is commonly recognized as a prerequisite of world literature, but that
movement alone does not necessarily qualify a work as world literature.
In other words, world literature is not to be conflated with transnational
14 • Wo rlding Wor ld L i t er at ur e f r om t he Per i pher y

literature. The circulation of Chinese literary texts in curricula designed for
Chinese-language learning worldwide is a case in point. These texts read
by readers across different countries for Chinese-language learning are
transnational, but they are not necessarily “world literature.” In addition
to transnational circulation, other factors have to be taken into account.
In Damrosch’s view, the term “world literature” refers to literary works
that “circulate beyond their culture of origin, either in translation or in their
original language”; however, “a work only has an effective life as world
literature whenever, and wherever, it is actively present within a literary
system beyond that of its original culture” (Damrosch 2003: 4). Spatial
circulation is a prerequisite of world literature, but the effective life of a
literary work in that circulation is crucial to its status as world literature.
This understanding generates a crucial question for world literature studies:
how can the effective life of literary works as world literature be pictured?
Rather than relying on a single dominant factor, such as the prestigious
Nobel Prize or the commercial value of a book in the global marketplace,
I propose a relatively objective scheme of “international recognition
indicators” (hereinafter called IRI) to paint this picture. This scheme operates
by using multiple factors to present the mode of circulation of literary
works. Arguably, the more indicators a literary work is marked with, the
more effective a life it enjoys in world literary space. The following table
illustrates the application of IRI to four Taiwanese writers. The activities
that constitute the mode of circulation characteristic of world literature
are categorized here as follows: the number of languages into which a
writer’s works are translated; international awards he or she has received;
the inclusion of the writer’s works in anthologies by international publishers
(e.g., The Norton Anthology of World Literature, The Longman Anthology
of World Literature) or literary websites (e.g., Words without Borders);
the construction of dedicated websites by institutions/organizations other
than Chinese communities (e.g., the Li Ang website constructed by the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology); book reviews or special reports
Figure 1: A quantitative measurement for defining world literature.
in international publications (e.g., The Guardian, The New York Times,

or World Literature Today) or on websites (e.g., Amazon or Goodreads
community reviews); adaptations of the writer’s works in any form (e.g.,

adaptations of Chen Li’s poem for the project “Dichter bij de Buurt” in
Rotterdam and of Li Ang’s short story “Beef Noodles” into a theatrical
production by the French Théâtre de l’Opprimé); scholarly publications on
the writer in languages other than Chinese (e.g., Wong 2009; Y. Wu 2013);
or “writer-in-residence” invitations offered by institutions outside Taiwan.
This quantitative IRI scheme provides a relatively objective measurement
of the effective life of world literature. Taken together, these indicators
configure the level of activeness of a writer in the space of world literature,
showing how his or her works travel in spatial circulation. The indicators
listed in the IRI scheme are certainly not exhaustive and can be modified;
the point is that the IRI scheme works by bringing multiple factors into play.
It identifies the mechanisms of what Pascale Casanova (2004: 127–136) calls
littérisation, the transmutation of a literary work from a state of invisibility
to visibility in the sphere of world literature.
The implications of this IRI scheme are multifold. First of all, it sees
littérisation as interplay of multiple mechanisms rather than privileging a
single factor; important as they are, literary prizes act as only one of the
mechanisms. Second, the emphasis on “languages other than Chinese” in
the design of the indicators underscores the importance of translation,
which carries literary works beyond their culture of origin. However, it
is also important to note that translation does not necessarily guarantee
readership: many translated works fail to resonate in the world literary
space. In the context of Taiwan literature in translation, Hsiao Li-hung’s
A Thousand Moons on a Thousand Rivers and Li Qiao’s Wintry Night are
good examples of translations that failed to garner much attention, as
Kenneth S. H. Liu (2006: 210) has discussed. Moreover, just as an ever-
expanding network of cross-medial transformations defines the life of
popular literature (Baetens 2012: 342–344), the effective life of world
literature as a mode of circulation increasingly thrives on a network of
verbal and nonverbal adaptations and transformations of the original work.
Thus, another merit of the IRI scheme is that by drawing attention to such
a cross-medial network—including adaptations in visual performance or
films, digital platforms, and verbal forms of dissemination such as book
reviews, research publications, and newspapers reports—it throws into
relief how the effective life of world literature hinges on its expansion of
the borders of the original work.
World Literature as a Mode of Reading

The quantitative method of the IRI scheme provides a set of basic criteria for
marking world literature as a specific space of border-crossing movement.
Nevertheless, world literature is not simply a mode of circulation; it also
distinguishes itself as “a mode of reading.” Spatial movement is essential
to the status of a literary work as world literature, but an overemphasis on
world literature as a mode of circulation reduces it to nothing more than
cultural commodities in a global market; this is why “world literature as a
mode of reading” should be kept in sight. In her elaboration on the complex
meanings of the word monde, Emily Apter makes it a point not to conflate
“world” with “globe.” She contends that whereas globalization refers to
“the crushing uni-totality of the network society,” mondialisation suggests
“a creative ‘world-forming’” (Apter 2013: 187). Likewise, Pheng Cheah
(2014: 306) pits “world” against “globe,” stressing that “the normative
force is the vocation of world literature.” He argues that world literature
possesses the power of “world-making,” which opens up an ethico-political
horizon for its readers (Cheah 2016: 5).
My discussion is divided into two parts. In the first part, I address the
issue of the mode of reading by examining the international reception
of two Taiwan fiction writers. Taking online reviews by lay readers into
account, I point out the potential of computer-assisted visualization of these
ever-growing responses as a helpful tool for analyzing world literature
as a mode of reading. In the second part, I focus on two Taiwan poets.
This discussion brings in sight the importance of poetry, which Stephen
Owen identifies as the least globalizable form of literature (2014: 257),

for critical world literature studies. Ultimately, I argue that in the Internet
age, there is a great chance for poetry to become the most promising
genre of world literature. Following Theo D’haen (2012: 101), the aim of
the discussion is not to argue “which writer should be more highly rated
as a world literature writer, but which work has been more highly rated, or
more widely disseminated, at which moment in time and where and why.”
The Global Multicultural Model: Li Ang

With the publication of The Butcher’s Wife (Shafu) in 1986 by an
independent publisher in San Francisco, Li Ang gained entry into world
literature. She is now commonly recognized as a Taiwanese feminist
writer, and her works have been translated into more than ten languages.
Theatrical performances based on her works have appeared in countries
such as France and Germany. Li Ang is also given a prominent role in a
documentary by the German documentary filmmaker Monika Treut. In
2004, she was honored with the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
by the Minister of French Culture and Communication in France. In taking
these things into consideration, the IRI scheme provides a sketch of the
active life of Li Ang’s works in spatial circulation.
Interestingly, Li Ang has never received any prestigious literary award
from the Taiwan government. In Taiwan, she is often seen as a controversial
literary figure (Y. Wu 2014: 1), known mostly for her bold treatment of
sex and violence that transgresses the tacit rules of literary etiquette
among contemporary Taiwanese readers. The “Translators’ Note” in the
first English version of The Butcher’s Wife identifies the publication of
the novella in Taiwan as “a significant literary event of 1983” and “a
courageous statement for literary freedom” (Goldblatt/Yeung 1986: np).
The domestic controversy surrounding The Butcher’s Wife attracted the
attention of Chinese literary studies scholars outside Taiwan. The young
Howard Goldblatt, who would later become one of the most influential
translators of modern Chinese literature, cotranslated the novella and
helped it get published in the United States.
The Los Angeles Times book review in 1986 describes this book as “the
most frightening book ever written about women oppressed by men, or any
helpless victim snuffed out by an uncaring society” (See 1986). A word cloud
(fig. 2) generated from the twenty-two readers’ online reviews available on
amazon.com and goodreads.com gives us a sense of how this book has been
1
The two word clouds were generated read by international readers in general.1 In this word cloud, the size of a
with online readers’ comments on the
word corresponds to the frequency of its appearance in readers’ comments.
websites of Amazon and Goodreads
accessed on January 18, 2017. Large words such as “chilling, brutal, abusive, justice, unforgettable, and
disturbing” reveal how readers identify the characteristics of the novella,
and “woman, husband, wife, butcher, animals, and Chinese” indicate the
types of characters. This visualization of general readers’ responses shows
how the book is read by general international readers. Apparently gender
Figure 2: A word cloud of readers’ online comments on The Butcher’s Wife.

oppression and marriage are the two foci of these readers’ comments;
this finding echoes the main points in the Los Angeles Times book review.
The small sample size demands explanation. First of all, this translation
came out in the 1980s, before the Internet and interactive online comments
existed, and records of the international reception of the book at that time
are not available. Second, tagging of The Butcher’s Wife on goodreads.
com suggests that the readers consider the book “serious literature”
rather than “popular literature.” Third, it is reasonable to assume that
recently published books command general readers’ interest more than
books published thirty years ago, even though our IRI scheme suggests
that The Butcher’s Wife has attracted the attention of various art groups
and literature experts across the world. The power of word clouds as an
analytical tool may not seem impressive here because of the small sample
size in this case, but as the open data of general readers’ responses online
continue to grow in the years to come, such digital tools will be increasingly
useful in understanding world literature as a mode of reading. Although
rudimentary in its application in the particular case of Li Ang, the usefulness
of word clouds already points to a new cultural environment in which
massive reader-generated data on the Internet will play a significant role
in world literature studies.
However, this does not mean that traditional humanities approaches
will become superfluous: the following discussion shows that they remain
as useful as ever, particularly when we try to delineate the complicated
trajectory of a writer’s entry into world literature. The English translation
of The Butcher’s Wife appeared in the US in 1986, at a time when feminist
literary criticism was particularly vibrant. Following several groundbreaking
publications by white feminist scholars in the 1970s, such as Elaine
Showalter’s A Literature of Their Own (1977), Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan
Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), and the translation of works on
l’écriture féminine from France, the 1980s witnessed the increasing impact
of notions of ethnicity, race, and class on feminist debates. Representative
texts include Mari Evan’s Black Women Writers, published in 1983, Hazel
Carby’s Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American
Woman Novelist in 1989, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s postcolonial
interventionist “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism” in
The Feminist Reader: Essays in Gender and the Politics of Literary Criticism
in 1989.
It was within this historical context that The Butcher’s Wife was
translated and recognized as a significant work by a young woman
writer from the literary periphery. It fit in with the feminist agenda of
stressing gender oppression as a universal problem. Also, the endorsement
of this unknown Taiwanese woman writer’s work reflected the then
multiculturalist call for decentralizing the “whiteness” of Western feminist
writing. Certainly, the recognition of Li Ang at that historical juncture can
be interpreted in terms of what Shu-mei Shih (2004: 22–23) calls “global
multiculturalism.” As a prevalent mode of recognition that “confer[s]
membership on literatures,” “global multiculturalism” extends the
American national model of multiculturalism, recognizing cultural others
according to a set of stereotypical representations (23). What Rey Chow calls
“primitive passions”—that is, Western fascination with and “primitivization
of non-Western lands and peoples” (1995: 20)—may also be at play here.
However, Li Ang’s entry into world literary space can also be interpreted
positively in terms of the power of world literature to open up “a new
universal horizon” (Cheah 2016: 41). In a sense, reading The Butcher’s Wife
“worlds” a world by making possible meaningful relations with other
beings; this is an important dimension of world literature as a particular
mode of reading. While fully registering Cheah’s important distinction
between “world” and “globe,” I urge for a method of world literature
studies that recognizes the interdependence of the two concepts rather
than pits them against each other. In proposing IRI as basic criteria for the
study of world literature, I argue that world literature necessarily implies a
global dimension, even as I acknowledge that when global literature fails

to “world,” it falls short of being world literature.
In spite of the international recognition Li Ang has garnered, she has
not been duly recognized by the Taiwan government as a representative
Taiwanese writer: she has never received the prestigious National Culture
and Arts Award, which confers official literary status on writers in Taiwan,
nor has the government invited her to represent Taiwan at the influential
Frankfurt Book Fair. Her entry into the realm of world literature illustrates
the constructive impact of the literary center on a peripheral field of literary
production. Without such an intervention, it is questionable whether a
transgressive writer like Li Ang would be able to enjoy her current literary
prestige. The global multicultural model as illustrated by Li Ang reveals
the dynamics of cultural contestation between the literary center and the
periphery in the shaping of world literature. Obviously, the center does
not necessarily always play a negative role.
The Globalization Model: Wu Ming-yi

In contrast to the controversial Li Ang, the nature writer Wu Ming-yi
is often touted by the Taiwan government as a representative (and
representable) Taiwanese writer (Sterk 2014). As Kenneth Liu (2006: 213)
points out, translations of Taiwan literature over the past half century
were published mostly by university presses or small commercial publishers,
many of which failed to reach the general public and did not have wide
circulation. Some people therefore see Harvill Secker’s 2011 purchase of
the English translation rights for Wu’s ecological catastrophe novel The
Man with the Compound Eyes (Fuyan ren) as a milestone in the history of
Taiwan literature in translation (Sterk 2014). Capitalizing on this successful
deal, the Taiwan Ministry of Culture organized a book tour in several
major cities in North America between 2013 and 2014. Since then, Wu has
been invited by the Taiwan government to represent Taiwan at various
international cultural events.
Introducing The Man with the Compound Eyes as “a novel for our time,
very much in tune with both the cult of video technology and the cult of
Nature,” the translator, Darryl Sterk (2013: 254), draws attention to the
story’s engagement with “issues of global concern through a fascinatingly
novel metaphor.” In response to the solicitation of the novel’s publishing
agents, the celebrated science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin offered her
endorsement with a strong blurb: “We haven’t read anything like this novel.
Ever. South America gave us magical realism—what is Taiwan giving us? A
new way of telling our new reality, beautiful, entertaining, frightening,
preposterous, true. . . . Wu Ming-Yi treats human vulnerability and the
2
See https://www.amazon.com/Man- world’s vulnerability with fearless tenderness.”2 Le Guin’s recommendation
Compound-Eyes-Novel/dp/0307907961
clearly boosted the profile of this young Taiwanese writer’s international
debut book in the global literary market.
Arguably, the marketing strategy of the novel’s agent, Gray Tan, and
the promotion efforts by the Taiwanese government worked together to
carve a niche for this Taiwanese writer in the highly competitive global
book market. It is noteworthy that Tan also helped set up Books from
Taiwan—a website funded by the Ministry of Culture in Taiwan to provide
“information about authors and books, along with who [sic] to contact
3
See http://booksfromtaiwan.tw/ in order to license translation rights.”3 As Gisèle Sapiro (2014: 224–226)
remarks, government policies of funding and promoting literary works in
cultural exchanges play a significant role in the global literary field. Since
his successful international debut, Wu’s reputation as a promising writer
of world literature has escalated. The English version of his next novel,
The Stolen Bicycle (2015), appeared in 2017 and was nominated for the
prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2018. Unlike Li Ang, whose entry into the
world literature space was predicated on the contestation between the
Taiwanese and the Western literary fields, the model as illustrated by Wu
is based on the successful integration of national and global interests. It
showcases a new strategic model of “publishing Taiwan.”
A word cloud generated from the one hundred or so online reviews
of The Man with the Compound Eyes on amazon.com and goodreads.com

is presented here (fig 3). As the notable size of the word “translation”
in the word cloud indicates, many readers pinpoint “translation” as a
question, and even a problem. Comments like the following abound in
these readers’ responses: “Uneven translation which made the book a bit
hard to read”; “This book seemed choppy, and it’s hard to tell how much
of that is a problem of translation”; “Really beautiful and fantastical, but
also fairly confusing with so many different characters and fantasy stories
and local legends being told all at once”; “lost in translation, if you’re not
into multiple narratives, non-linear narratives, or magical realism, you may
not enjoy this book.”
Most of the readers attribute the “uneven narration” and “loose plot”
of the novel to flawed translation. However, translation aside, the fact that
Wu started out as an essay writer should also be taken into account. He
made his name with the publication of two essay collections, The Book of
Lost Butterflies (Mi die zhi) in 2000 and The Dao of Butterflies (Die dao)
Figure 3: A word cloud of readers’ comments on The Man with the Compound Eyes.
in 2003. He identified himself as a “nature writer” more skilled at “prose
writing” than “fiction making.” Traditionally, “nature writing” was taken
to designate, in the words of the eco-critic Patrick Murphy (2000: 3), “a self-
consciously practiced literary genre of nonfiction” at the early stage of its
development. Indeed, Wu’s definition of “nature writing” in Exploration of
Modern Nature Writing of Taiwan: 1980–2002, a collection of critical essays
originally published in 2004, emphasizes the importance of “factualness”
and “nonfiction” as the defining elements of “nature writing” (2012: 38).
Prose writing tends to highlight vignette description rather than a well-
wrought overall narrative structure. Both the strengths and limitations
of prose writing are thus reflected in The Man with the Compound Eyes.
However, even though readers question the uneven narration, the
number of reviews reveals the relative success of the novel in the global
marketplace. In the word cloud, descriptive words such as “spiritual,
beautiful, fantastical, stunning, heartbreaking” appear in a bigger size,
indicating their frequency in the readers’ comments. On the goodreads.
com website, the novel is tagged under the categories of “magical realism,”
“fantasy,” and “science fiction,” whereas The Butcher’s Wife is classified
as “feminism,” “literature,” and “literary fiction.” Although a website
visit on February 6, 2017 showed that 1,825 readers marked Wu’s novel as
“to-read,” only 265 similarly marked Li Ang’s novella. Arguably, the larger
number of reviews for Wu’s novel reflects the stronger appeal of popular
genres, such as fantasy and science fiction, in international book markets.
The English publishers of this work raised the names of Haruki
Murakami and David Mitchell to help international readers connect
with Wu (Aw 2013). These two world-renowned writers are known for
straddling genre fiction—particularly fantasy and science fiction—and
literary fiction, and their works sell well. As revealed in the 2015 “literary
fiction vs. genre fiction” debate sparked by the implications of the Nobel
Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro’s concern with his new work being taken as
“fantasy” (Cain 2015; Barnett 2015), fantasy and science fiction are often

regarded as popular fictional genres, which are conventionally ranked
lower on literary hierarchies. Notably, Ursula Le Guin and David Mitchell,
whose names were invoked in the English promotion of The Man with the
Compound Eyes, took Ishiguro to task and spoke up in defense of genre
fiction in this heated debate (Le Guin 2015; Barnett 2015). For the purpose
of our discussion, it is meaningful that, as the statistics from goodreads.
com indicate, The Man with the Compound Eyes is tagged as “fantasy”
and “science fiction” by many of its readers. Whereas The Butcher’s Wife
claimed international recognition because it happened to ride the tide of
Western feminism in the 1980s, the attraction for international readers of
The Man with the Compound Eyes is due, at least to a significant extent,
to its strategic exploitation of the elements of popular literary genres to
deliver a message of contemporary global concern. Comparing Wu’s novel
to the works by Le Guin and Mitchell thus is reasonable.
Suggesting intricate interplays between the local and the global, as
well as deconstructing the distinction between literary fiction and genre
fiction, this model leads to two significant points. First, it reminds us of the
interventional role of the national in the field of world literature. Second,
it calls attention to the critical issue of literary genres in the conception
of world literature. The ecological vision evoked in The Man with the
Compound Eyes is “planetary”—a term Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak used
(2003: 72) to suggest the constitution of ethical relations with nonhuman
as well as human others within and beyond our current taxonomies. This
planetary vision obviously gestures toward the novel’s worldly project—
that is, the activation of the normative dimension of literary writing by
bringing other possible worlds into view. Interestingly, the dissemination of
this world-making planetary vision is conducted through the attraction of
popular literary genres in the global book market. If world literature means
“world-making” literature, then The Man with the Compound Eyes invites
us to reflect more critically on the relationship between literary genres
and world literature. World literature traditionally refers to elite literature
rather than to popular literature (Zhang 2015: 7), but the globalization
model as illustrated by Wu Ming-yi’s The Man with the Compound Eyes
raises questions about this understanding. There is an intricate interplay,
rather than a simple opposition, between globe and world.
The Transnational Model: Yang Mu

The case of the poet Yang Mu as a world literature writer offers an
interesting comparison with Li Ang and Wu Ming-yi. Yang’s writing is elitist
literature par excellence, saturated with “references to ancient mythology
(Narcissus, Athena), religion (‘Theology,’ The Bible, Crusaders, Easter),
history, and, of course, literature (Virgil, Marlowe, Dryden, Wordsworth,
Emily Dickenson)” (Yeh 1998). As various scholars note, Yang Mu straddles
the literary traditions of China and the West (Wong 2009: 22; Chiu 2013:
161). Although born in Taiwan and often stressing the importance of
his Taiwanese roots for his literary creations, Yang Mu is internationally
recognized not simply as a Taiwanese writer, but also as a Chinese writer
whose signature cosmopolitan writing is more “transnational” than
“national.” In a blurb written for No Trace of the Gardener: Poems of Yang
Mu, the literary critic Eugene Eoyang introduces the poet as follows: “Yang
Mu, a pivotal figure in the development of modern Chinese literature, is
one of the most widely read living poets of the world’s largest literary
4
See https://www.amazon.com/ audience: Chinese-speaking people.”4
No-Trace-Gardener-Poems-Yang/
Yang Mu was the first Taiwanese writer to be awarded the Newman
dp/0300070705/ref=sr_1_1?ie=
UTF8&qid=1486797475&sr=8- Prize for Chinese Literature, the first major American award for Chinese
1&keywords=yangmu
literature, in 2013, and in 2016 he became the first Taiwanese (and Chinese-
language) writer to win the Swedish Cikada Prize. Translations and studies
of Yang Mu’s poems have appeared in several languages. Nevertheless, in
spite of his literary prestige, one scarcely finds any readers’ reviews on Yang
Mu’s translated works on amazon.com and goodreads.com. Compared to
fiction, poetry is a genre less appealing to lay readers in the commercial
book market. Consequently, word clouds, which serve as a useful analytical

tool for examining the international reception of fictional works, are less
helpful here. The case of Yang Mu requires more traditional critical analysis.
Both Li Ang and Wu Ming-yi highlight their engagement with alterity
(the silenced subaltern women in Li Ang’s novella; the exploited nonhumans
as well as indigenous people in Wu Ming-yi’s novel) in their world-making
endeavors, but Yang Mu takes another path. As Lisa Wong (2009: 81)
contends, Yan Mu’s poetic achievement rests “in his blending of the Chinese
and Western literary traditions.” For the poet, a fundamental question is
the relationship between writers from the literary periphery and world
literary traditions. Like Jorge Luis Borges (2014: 396), who insists on the
right of Argentine writers to draw from Western cultural traditions, Yang
Mu claims the literary heritages of the world as his inexhaustible resources.
Particularly intriguing here is the relationship between a Taiwanese
writer and the Chinese literary tradition (Yeh 1991: 139; Chiu 2013: 160–163).
When talking about Irish writers’ relationship to English culture, Borges
remarks that “the fact of feeling themselves to be Irish, to be different, was
enough to enable them to make innovations in English culture” (Borges
2014: 397). Something similar can be said about Yang Mu’s relationship to
Chinese literary tradition. Yang Mu’s writing is thought to have expanded
the horizon of Chinese literary writing and is often taken as contemporary
Chinese lyric poetry at its best (Wong 2009: 19; Chiu 2013: 165). Lisa Wong
argues that Yang Mu’s writing is densely “intracultural” and “cross-cultural”
because the poet draws on both Chinese and Western literary traditions
(2009: 80). As a result, “specific literary referents from different discourses
and culture offer multiple perspectives on an event in a given corner of the
world” (Wong 2009: 106). Take the poem “Looking Down (Liwu Stream,
1983)” as an example. The poem weaves the poet’s subjective emotion
with the description of the geological features of a local stream in Yang’s
hometown in Taiwan. The assumed “localness” of the poem, suggested by
the name of the stream in the title, is problematized at the very beginning:
the text begins with a reference to the English Romantic poet William
Wordsworth’s poem “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey.”
The poem then expresses a surge of strong and complex emotion as the
poet, from the perspective of an older and mature man, looks down at
the stream in the valley he has known since his youth. The poetic vision
is shaped by abundant allusions to literary texts from the Chinese literary
tradition, including the Daode jing, the Yijing, and Tang poetry (Tseng nd).
Although the topographical description of the particularity of the stream
underscores the notion of localness, the vast network of intertextuality
suggests a movement across time and space among different literary
traditions in the making of the poetic vision. As the nature images in poems
of other times and other traditions are conjured up and superimposed on
the nature images of the Liwu Stream in the act of poetic creation, the
nature landscape in this poem is at once the Liwu stream in all its material,
geological particularity and the embodiment of nature in a cross-cultural
context of literary references. Actively participating in the discursive space
of world literature, Yang Mu demonstrates the use of world literature
traditions for writers from the literary periphery and how claiming this
rich corpus of literary resources creates “worlds” for them. Instead of
representing any particular national literature, Yang Mu positions himself
as an heir to the great tradition of Literature across both time and space.
“Worlding” in this case means to participate in the constant rejuvenation
of that tradition. For Yang Mu, to be a world literature writer is to choose
to be an heir to that heritage (Chiu 2013: 166), “reaffirming” and “keeping
it alive” through active intervention.
With this emphasis on cosmopolitanism, the making of Yang Mu as a
world literature writer departs from the model of national literature. His
high profile is buttressed by a network of scholars who are well versed in
world literature (or comparative literature). The major translators of Yang
Mu’s three monographs are all distinguished scholars of Chinese literature
or comparative literature: Michelle Yeh and John Balcom teach in the US,
and Lisa Wong is at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. In

addition, Goran Malmqvist, a fellow of the Swedish Academy and Senior
Judge for the Nobel Prize in Literature, has also actively translated and
promoted Yang Mu. The literary and cultural capital of these world-
renowned scholar-translators has helped boost the profile of Yang Mu as
a world literature author; the fact that Michelle Yeh wrote the nomination
statement for Yang Mu for the 2013 Newman Prize is an example. This
transnational model shows how the combination of academic resources and
mechanisms of literary reproduction may work as a force to help sustain
elitist literature in the world literary space.
The Cross-Medial Model: Chen Li

Compared to the transnational model of Yang Mu, the model I associate
with the experimental poet Chen Li illustrates what a peripheral writer
with relatively limited local resources can do to open up the world. Chen
Li earned his living as a high school English teacher in his hometown of
Hualien. The winner of numerous Taiwanese literary awards, Chen Li
has not yet garnered any international awards. His poems in translation
appear in anthologies such as Frontier Taiwan: An Anthology of Modern
Chinese Poetry (Columbia University Press, 2001), Language for a New
Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond
(W. W. Norton, 2008), and world literature websites such as Asymptote
and Words without Borders.
Like Yang Mu, Chen Li is well versed in both Western and Chinese
literature. They have the same cosmopolitan outlook, and both saturate
their writings with references to world masterpieces. However, whereas
dense lyricism characterizes Yang Mu’s poetry, Chen Li is known for his
avant-gardism, which “refers to both the philosophical underpinnings and
the artistic intention of [Chen Li’s] poems” (Yeh 2001: 49). The question of
mediality is at the heart of Chen Li’s poetic creation, which means that he
demands a mode of reading that pays close attention to the materiality
of media (Lee 2014). While the increasing complexities of the mediascape
in the twentieth-first century have made mediality a pivotal concern for
cultural and literary studies (Hayles/Pressman 2013: xx), new questions of
media-focused literary analysis raised by Chen Li’s experiments mark him
as an important case for world literature studies, even though his potential
as a world literature writer in the new era is yet to be explored further.
The celebrated poem “War Symphony” (Zhanzheng jiaoxiang qu) is a
good example. This poem has been translated multiple times and included
in different anthologies. Originally published in the mid-1990s as a visual
poem, it is now presented in three medial forms online: the visual poem in
print form, an animated version, and a sound poem in a reading conducted
by the poet himself (http://faculty.ndhu.edu.tw/~chenli/poetrymp3i.htm).
In its original print form, the poem is composed of the Chinese word 兵
(soldier) and its three variations 乒 (originally a Chinese sound word, but
representing a soldier without a right leg here); 乓 (also originally a Chinese
sound word, but signifying a soldier without a left leg here), and 丘 (the
Chinese word for a small hill or tomb). The special layout of the Chinese
words forces the reader to engage in the visual materiality of the poem
in its print form.
The visual poem contains three stanzas. The first stanza displays a
rectangle made up of 384 repetitions of the word 兵, suggesting the
deployment of an army of soldiers on a battlefield. In the second stanza,
乒 and 乓 as variations of 兵 begin to appear in crescendo, visualizing these
soldiers losing legs in battle.
兵兵兵兵兵兵兵乒兵兵兵兵兵兵兵乓兵兵兵兵兵兵兵乒
兵兵兵乓兵兵乒兵兵兵乒乒兵兵乒乓兵兵乒乓兵兵乓乓
乒乒兵兵兵兵乓乓乓乓兵兵乒乒乓乓乒乓兵乓兵兵乓乓
兵乒兵乒乒乒乓乓兵兵乒乒乓乓乓乓乒乒乓乓乒兵乓乓
乒兵乓乓乒兵乓乓乒乒乓乓乒乒乓乓乒乒乓乓乒乒乓乓
乒乒乓乓乒乒乓乓乒乒乓乓乒乒乓乓乒乒乓乓乒乒乓乓
乒乒乓乓乒乒乓乓乒乒乓乓乒乒乓乓乒乒乓乓乒乒乓乓
乒乓乒乓乒乓乒乓乒乓乒乓乒乓乒乓乒乓乒乓乒乓乒乓
乒乓乒乓乒乒乓乓乒乓乒乓乒乒乓乓乒乓乒乓乒乒乓乓

乒乒乒乒乒乒乒乒乓乓乓乓乓乓乓乓乒乒乒乒乒乓
乓乓乒乓乒乒乒乓乒乒乒乒乓乓
乒乒乓乒乒乓乒乓乒乒乒乓乒
乒乒乓乓乓乒乒乓乒乓乒
乒乓乓乓乒乓
乒乓乒乓乓
乒乓
The final stanza also takes the form of a rectangle but is made up of 384 丘
instead of 384兵, suggesting catastrophic war casualties. The deployment
of soldiers ready for battle in the first stanza is now transformed into a
mournful layout of their tombs in a field.
Although critics have commented insightfully on the aural dimension
of this visual poem and its animated version (Lee 2014: 86–87; Bachner
2014: 90–91), few have speculated on the significance of the online
juxtaposition of a recited version of the poem with the visual poem in
print. The poet’s reading performance turns the visual poem into a sound
poem. 乒 and 乓, the two visual variations of 兵, come to imitate the
fierce clashing of weapons in battle, embodied in the fast tempo and
high pitch of the poet’s voice. The poet’s extended, lingering breath in
the pronunciation of 丘 (signifying “tomb” in the visual version) suggests
the last, languid breathing of dying soldiers. As Peter Middleton (2005: 56)
remarks, “The acoustic dance of language in performance stems from the
roots of culture, the deeper, least articulated fields, tradition at its most
unconscious.” The poet’s oral performance subtly transforms the meaning
of the visual poem while maintaining his intended critique of war in its
original visual version. The juxtaposition of the visual poem with its sound
version draws attention, in the words of Johanna Drucker (1998: 132), to
“the performative aspects of material over and above the linear, normative
logic of conventional linguistic formulations.” With the poem in both its
print form and its oral performance presented on the website, the spatiality
of visual poetry and the temporality of sound poetry interact to generate
intriguing questions for literary studies about mediality. As Tong King Lee
(2014: 89) remarks, Chen Li’s website displays what Katherine Hayles calls
“Work as Assemblage,” juxtaposing various instantiations of the same work
to form an “intertextual-translational cluster.” Apparently, a new mode
of reading other than that for interpreting print texts is needed. Chen Li’s
material poetics heralds a world literature-to-come in the new world of
cross-mediality (fig. 4).
Figure 4: Online juxtaposition of three versions of “War Symphony”.

Significantly, this new mode of reading in world literature is impossible
without a new mode of circulation. The new life of Chen Li’s visual poem as
a sound poem demands a material structural overhaul of literary production
and dissemination. The coexistence of the visual poem and the sound poem
on the same website page raises the question of what David Damrosch
(2013: 160) calls “the ongoing life of the literary in today’s expansive
mediascape.” Whereas print literature has implicitly and profoundly shaped
our way of interpreting literary works (Vandendorpe 2013: 203–204),
texts on-screen are increasingly taking the form of “an interactive mix of
text, images, sounds, and graphs” and affecting our reading experience
(Vandendorpe 2013: 210). Without doubt, this new literary environment
poses a challenge for world literature studies.
Arguably, Chen Li’s pioneering experiments with cross-medial literary
production and dissemination places the peripheral Taiwanese writer at
the forefront of world literature-to-come. They signify a bold act of world-
making on the part of the writer to try to overcome the disadvantaged
position of peripheral writers in what Pascale Casanova calls the “aesthetic-
temporal struggle” in world literature (2005: 77). At the same time, cross-
medial poems such as “War Symphony” stage an intricate interplay between
translatability and untranslatability. As Johanna Drucker points out, what
characterizes visual modern poetics is that the typographic form of visual
poetry insists on its untranslatability (1998: 133). So does sound poetry.
Highlighting the cultural particularities of Sino-scripts and Sino-phones,
“War Symphony” activates the notion of untranslatability, which Emily
Apter addresses (2013: 31–44) in her discussion of the limits of translation
in conceptualizing world literature, but it does so only to insinuate slyly
through eye/ear-catching cross-medial transformations the translatability
of the literary form that is deemed most untranslatable. In the words of
Stephen Owen (2014: 256), “poetry has taken on a new and strange life”
on the Internet.
Conclusion
Defining world literature as “a mode of circulation” as well as “a mode of
reading,” this essay combines quantitative and qualitative approaches to
analyze the cultural dynamics at play as peripheral literature takes part in
the world literature space. I have proposed an “International Recognition
Indicators” scheme as a useful tool to address the circulation dimension of
world literature. Whereas world literature as a mode of circulation evokes
the notion of “globe,” world literature as a mode of reading underscores
the world-making power of world literature. With four illustrative Taiwan
models, I demonstrate how writers from the literary periphery “world
the world” and participate in the making of world literature. I address
important issues such as the role of the literary center, the intricate
relationship between art and the book market, the usefulness of world
literature resources for peripheral writers, the meaning of reaffirming the
tradition of world literature through active intervention from the literary
periphery, and a possible new horizon for peripheral writers as world
literature enters the networked, cross-medial age. I also call attention to
the emergence of a new technologized cultural environment in which big
data of general readers’ comments and cross-medial literary production are
exerting an impact on our definition, research, and interpretation of world
literature. “Worlding” appears in different forms when the peripheral
creates opportunities for the reinvention of the “world” of world literature.

Glossary
Die dao 蝶道
Chen Li 陳黎
Fuyan ren 複眼人
Hsiao Li-hung 蕭麗紅
Li Ang 李昂
Li Qiao 李喬
Liwu 立霧
Mi die zhi 迷蝶誌
Shafu 殺夫
Wu Ming-yi 吳明益
Yang Mu 楊牧
“Zhanzheng jiaoxiang qu” 戰爭交響曲
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邱貴芬 Worlding World Literature from the Literary Periphery Four Taiwanese Models

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“Worlding” World Literature from the Literary Periphery Four Taiwanese Models

Author(s): Kuei-fen Chiu

“Worlding” World Literature from the Literary Periphery

“a mode of circulation and of reading.” Rather than relying exclusively on

World Literature as Mode of Circulation

14 • Wo rlding Wor ld L i t er at ur e f r om t he Per i pher y

in international publications (e.g., The Guardian, The New York Times,

16 • Wo rlding Wor ld L i t er at ur e f r om t he Per i pher y

World Literature as a Mode of Reading

18 • Wo rlding Wor ld L i t er at ur e f r om t he Per i pher y

The Global Multicultural Model: Li Ang

Figure 2: A word cloud of readers’ online comments on The Butcher’s Wife.

20 • Wo rlding Wor ld L i t er at ur e f r om t he Per i pher y

22 • Wo rlding Wor ld L i t er at ur e f r om t he Per i pher y

The Globalization Model: Wu Ming-yi

24 • Wo rlding Wor ld L i t er at ur e f r om t he Per i pher y

26 • Wo rlding Wor ld L i t er at ur e f r om t he Per i pher y

The Transnational Model: Yang Mu

28 • Wo rlding Wor ld L i t er at ur e f r om t he Per i pher y

30 • Wo rlding Wor ld L i t er at ur e f r om t he Per i pher y

The Cross-Medial Model: Chen Li

32 • Wo rlding Wor ld L i t er at ur e f r om t he Per i pher y

Figure 4: Online juxtaposition of three versions of “War Symphony”.

34 • Wo rlding Wor ld L i t er at ur e f r om t he Per i pher y

36 • Wo rlding Wor ld L i t er at ur e f r om t he Per i pher y

Apter, Emily. 2013. Against World Literature: On the Politics of

Baetens, Jan. 2012. “World Literature and Popular Literature: Toward a

Barnett, David. 2015. “David Mitchell: Separating Literary and Genre

Casanova, Pascale. 2004. The World Republic of Letters. Tr. M. B. DeBevoise.

———. 2005. “Literature as a World.” New Left Review 31: 71–90.

Cheah, Pheng. 2014. “World against Globe: Toward a Normative Concept

———. 2016. What Is a World? On Postcolonial Literature as World

Chiu, Kuei-fen. 2013. “Cosmopolitanism and Indigenism: The Use of Cultural

Chow, Rey. 1995. Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and

Damrosch, David. 2003. What Is World Literature? Princeton: Princeton

———. 2013. “World Literature in a Postliterary Age,” Modern Language

Derrida, Jacques and Elisabeth Roudinesco. 2004. For What Tomorrow: A

D’haen, Theo. 2012. The Routledge Concise History of World Literature.

———, César Domínguez, and Mads Rosendahl Thomsen. 2013.

Drucker, Johanna. 1998. “Visual Performance of the Poetic Text.” In Charles

38 • Wo rlding Wor ld L i t er at ur e f r om t he Per i pher y

Guttman, Anna, Michel Hockx, and George Paizis. 2006. “Introduction.” In

Hayles, N. Katherine and Jessica Pressman. 2013. “Introduction: Making,

Lee, Tong King. 2014. “Toward a Material Poetics in Chinese: Text,

Liu, Kenneth S. H. 2006. “Publishing Taiwan: A Survey of Publications of

Middleton, Peter. 2005. Distant Reading: Performance, Readership, and

Moretti, Franco. 2013. Distant Reading. London: Verso.

Murphy, Patrick D. 2000. Farther Afield in the Study of Nature-Oriented

Sapiro, Gisèle. 2014. “Globalization and Cultural Diversity in the Book

See, Carolyn. 1986. “Book Review: Tortured Woman in a Sadistic Marriage.”

Shih, Shu-mei. 2004. “Global Literature and the Technologies of

Spivak, Gayatri. 2003. Death of a Discipline. New York: Columbia University

Vandendorpe, Christian. 2013. “Reading on Screen: The New Media

Wu Ming-yi吳明益. 2000. Mi die zhi 迷蝶誌 (The book of lost butterflies).

40 • Wo rlding Wor ld L i t er at ur e f r om t he Per i pher y

———. 2012. Taiwan ziran shuxie de tansuo 1980–2002台灣自然書寫的探索

———. 1998. “Introduction.” In Yang Mu, Lawrence R. Smith, and Michelle

———. 2001. “Frontier Taiwan: An Introduction.” In Michelle Yeh and N.

Zhang, Yingjin. 2015. “Mapping Chinese Literature as World Literature.”

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