| The PhD research aims to study relationship between education and poetic identity in contemporary Chinese poetry, with reference to two literary-generational groups of poets: Menglong (Misty, Obscure) and Post-Menglong poets. In contemporary China, Menglong and Post-Menglong poets have been central in establishing a new poetic tradition that has gained recognition inside China and worldwide. A striking difference in life experience between these two generations is that the former generally had limited exposure to formal education (with few of them finishing secondary school during the Cultural Revolution, and none attending university), and many of the latter had fully-fledged secondary and university educations, often specializing in Chinese and foreign literature. The project explores how this difference in life experience is reflected in the respective poetic identities of the Menglong and Post-Menglong generations, and how these respective identities relate to socio-cultural development in the broad sense, in the China of the 1980s and 1990s. |
