Abstract
During the last decade or so, the literary writings that portray the lives of the wolves and their relationship with the humans sprouted and prospered in China. These wolf writings all give very vivid and appealing portraits of wolves, their wild existence, their character, their relationship with men, and their role in the ecosystem. They have shaped our understanding of and attitudes towards animals and nature, which is of great value to the ongoing building of ecological civilization in China as well as in the world. In general, the Chinese wolf literature has inevitably been influenced and inspired by the long and rich traditions of the wolf myths and literature in the West, particularly those works of Jack London, Rudyard Kipling and other Western writers since the end of the 19th century. With due attention paid to the influence of the Western wolf literature, this essay will mainly analyze the three most important Chinese wolf novels—The Wolf Child, Remembering Wolves and The Wolf Totem, both separately and with reference to one another. It argues that the representations of wolves in them subvert the stereotypical hostile images of wolf in traditional Chinese culture, bring about fresh reflections on the cultural and spiritual symptoms of (post)modernity and globalization, and finally lead to a growing ecological consciousness and the call for balance between humans and nonhumans.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Malamud, R. (2003). Poetic animals and animal souls (p. 19). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
See Slovic, S. (2008). Doing away to think: Engagement, retreat, and ecocritical responsibility (p. 110). Reno: University of Nevada Press.
Robisch, S. K. (1998). Big holy dog: Big Holy Dog: The Wolf in North American Literature. PhD dissertation, Purdue University (p. 3).
Buell, L. (2001). Writing for the endangered world (p. 2). Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Buell, L. (2001). Writing for the endangered world (p. 1). Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
The story about an ungrateful wolf began to spread from the early 16th century in China. For centuries this story has appeared in multiple literary forms such as classical tales, drama and illustrations in the Chinese tradition. “The wolf of Zhongshan” has been a Chinese term commonly used to refer to ingrates.
Auerbach, J. (1995). Congested mails: Buck and Jack’s call. American Literature, 67(1), 52.
Li, M. (2005). Lang de yishu yu ren de zhexue (The Art of Wolf and the Philosophy of Man). Journal of Lanzhou Jiaotong University, 24(2), 16. Translations are all mine if not indicated.
Fan, G. (2001) Ren bian lang bi lang chiren geng kebei (Man Turning into Wolf Is Worse Than Wolf Eating Man). Lvye (Green Leaves), 6, 56.
Guo, X. (2001). Damo Langhai [The Wolf Child in the Desert] (pp. 260–261). Beijing: Press of China Federation of Literature and Art.
Malamud, p. 3.
Ibid., p. 3.
See Garrard, G. (2004). Ecocriticism (p. 136). London: Routledge.
Quoted in Malamud, p. 4.
Ibid.
See Auerbach (1995, p. 58).
Quoted in Feng, X. (1952). Huiyi Lu Xun [Lu Xun remembered] (p. 31). Beijing: People’s Literature Press.
Jia, P. (2006).Huainian lang [Remembering Wolves] (p. 176). Shengyang: Chunfeng wenyi chubanshe. If not otherwise indicated, all quotations of the novel are taken from this version.
Liang, Z. (2000). Jia Pingwa fangtan lu: guanyu Huainian lang (Interview with Jia Pingwa: on Remembering Wolves). Dangdai zuojia pinglun (Contemporary Writers Review), 4, 88.
Singer, P. (1983). Animal liberation: Towards an end to man’s inhumanity to animals (p. 9). Wellingborough, Northants: Thorsons.
Berger, J. “Why look at animals?”, in About Looking (London: Penguin, 1980), p. 14; quoted in Ecocriticism, p. 139.
Quoted in Greenwood, A. (2000). The animals can remember: Representations of the non-human other in Alice Walker’s The temple of my familiar. Worldviews, 4, 168.
Ecocriticism, p. 158.
Liang, p. 89.
Ecocriticism, p. 140.
Hogan, L. (1996). Dwellings: A spiritual history of the living world (p. 64). New York: Touchstone.
Coonan, C. (2007). Anonymous novel about wolf wisdom is howling success, Irish Times, Nov 13, 2007.
Chan, B. Wolf Totem a Landmark of Chinese Literature. http://www.straight.com/node/140173.
See “Jiang Rong and His Wolf Totem” (2004-12-10) http://www.newsgd.com/culture/art/2004.
Jiang, R. (2004). Lang tuteng [The Wolf Totem]. Wuhan: Changjiang wenyi chubanshe. If not otherwise stated, all quotations of The Wolf Totem are taken from this version.
Leopold, A. (1989). Sand county Almanac (p. 21). New York: Oxford University Press.
Buell, L. (1995). The environmental imagination (p. 3). Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Auerbach, J. (1995). Congested mails: Buck and jack’s call. American Literature, 67(1), 53.
Meeker, J. W. (1996). The comic mode. In C. Glotfelty & H. Fromm (Eds.), The ecocriticism reader: Landmarks in literary ecology (p. 157). Athens: The University of Georgia Press.
Ibid., p. 168.
Malamud, p. 63.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
He, C. Poetic wolves and environmental imagination: representations of wolf in recent Chinese literature. Neohelicon 36, 397–410 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-009-0009-1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-009-0009-1