Metanarrative Polyvocality, New Historical Fiction, and Discourses of Violence: Towards a Narratology of Xue Mo's Spiritual Realism

This presentation focuses on Curses of the Kingdom of Xixia (2010) and Wild Fox Ridge (2014) by Xue Mo, two novels that followed the Desert Trilogy and which mark a significant transition in his style and narrative construction. Through such artistic innovations and writerly transformation, Xue Mo contributes to the emergence of a unique narrative form that blends traditional and modern Chinese literary modes with contemporary artistic experimentation to reveal, reclaim, and explore local Chinese culture. This presentation presents preliminary ideas on developing a new critical framework for describing and interpreting the distinguishing narrative features of Xue Mo’s spiritual realism so that we can better understand his literary experimentation and unique contribution to an emerging Chinese postsecularism. A significant innovation is the creation of a new critical term called spiritual realism which is distinguished from magical realism.