Reading Lu Xun Through Carl Jung By Carolyn Brown

stories is in part a function of their structure.¹⁸ Critics have further argued that Lu Xun’s narrative procedures embody his concerns about the limitation of language to engender action in the world. Despite some excesses in expression, practitioners of theoretical and poststructuralist discourse have substantially increased the sophistication of interpretation and demonstrated decisively that the mapping between fiction and reality was not as transparent as had been assumed.¹⁹ The best of these scholars simultaneously hold Lu Xun’s subjectivity within the larger historical context.²⁰

Lu Xun had been explicit about drawing on international models in writing his stories but said relatively little about which specific literary works had inspired him and apparently nothing about the ways in which he used them.²¹ The critics’ search for foreign influences that shaped his sensibility and techniques has complemented investigation into his participation in international discourses of modernity.²² Reconsidering the evidence of a rupture between past and present, scholars have also looked for cultural continuities and inquired into the influence that Lu Xun’s Chinese literary forebears had on him.²³ The expanded framework for considering his works has been further enlarged by attention to the context of national and international power relationships that shape the assumptions about what a text is and how it functions within its political, economic, and social environments. Other lines of inquiry have situated his works in an expanded appreciation for the multiple intellectual currents of his time, including the ways in which his thinking resembled or differed from that of his contemporaries. Included in this expansion are comparisons of the liberal icon Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962) with Lu Xun, an exploration that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago.²⁴ Incorporated, too, are considerations of the works of Lu Xun’s contemporaries who rejected the notion that literature should have a moral mission. Researchers now take better account of the commercial world of consumer-oriented literature and popular forms, such as newspapers and magazines, which was part of the context in which Lu Xun lived and wrote.²⁵ Other scholars have