Abstract:
Using comparative critical analytical methods and drawing on literary and social history, this unprecedented author-based case study of work dealing with the themes of rape and murder by four authors, A Yi, Chi Zijian, Alice Sebold and Ian McEwan expands, recontextualises and reframes current scholarship on literary representations of murder and rape.the fact that rape and murder are recurrent literary themes, cross-cultural studies of works which engage with them are scarce. This study fills this gap by bringing together four writers from three cultural contexts (China, UK, USA) to conduct a cross-cultural examination of their work within the framework of crime writing, and more specifically, the problematics of writing about and reading about murder and rape. In contrast to the extensive scholarship on crime writing in the west, there is very little academic work on crime writing or crime fiction in China, especially on contemporary writing. This is the first study of its kind to investigate two contemporary Chinese writers who represent the current state of Chinese crime writing. Studies of rape and murder remain taboo subjects in the contemporary Chinese academic world. This study breaks this taboo and brings Chinese crime writing into international comparison. It also offers the first critical analysis in English of the work of Chi Zijian, one of the most prominent female writers in contemporary China. The cross-cultural approach counters the provinciality of Western scholarship and brings the Chinese writers’ points of view into dialogue with it. For example, the connotations of feminism assume a greater degree of fluidity and heterogeneity when investigated in texts produced by authors from different cultural backgrounds. Against the trend of absorbing feminism into other social movements, this study reaffirms the currency and vitality of the second-wave feminism and its cross-cultural applicability. This comparative analysis of the striking characters and complex narratives produced by the four writers speaks to some of today’s most pressing social and moral issues and encourages the reader to contemplate and perhaps rethink the answers to some significant, time-honoured questions, such as how to understand the dark undercurrents of human nature human, or the role one’s social position plays in the interpretation and commission of violent crime, or the extent to which one should sympathize and empathise with the criminals and victims , or what we can do as individuals and as a society to respond to the perplexing moral conditions of the present time.