China Humanitites Seminar
Covering the whole span of Chinese experience predating the modern era, the China Humanities Seminar addresses all aspects of Chinese civilization—literature, history, philosophy, religion, art history, and the performing arts

Monday, October 5, 2009 4:00 pm
Jin Ping Mei and Robinson Crusoe: A Horizontal Comparison
Ning Ma, Tufts University

In this talk, Professor Ma illustrates striking structural parallels in Jin Ping Mei and Robinson Crusoe, two texts often described as the first "novel" in their respective cultural traditions. Based on the findings of comparative historians such as Joseph Fletcher, Andre Gunder Frank, and Kenneth Pomeranz, she argues that these literary correspondences may be explained as the result of an analogous ideological crisis that took place in China and Europe during the period due to a global economic boom brought by the early modern silver trade. Professor Ma proposes a horizontal or cross-cultural origin of the novel that challenges previous accounts that theorize the history of the genre and its assumed modernity in exclusively Eurocentric terms.

Ning Ma received her PhD in comparative literature from Princeton University in 2008 and now teaches at Tufts University as assistant professor of Chinese. She received the 2008 Aldridge Prize for her essay "When Robinson Crusoe Meets Ximen Qing: Material Egoism in the First Chinese and English Novels," which has been published by Comparative Literature Studies. She is currently working on a book project comparing the rise of the novel in China and Europe between 1500 and 1800.

Location: Common Room, 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA
Contact: vleung@fas.harvard.edu