Harmonious and Tear - An Imagological Investigation of the “Hybrid” in Mo Yan's Novels

Aug 27, 2026

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Mo Yan’s literary creation integrates world literature, folk resources and classical traditions, creating broad interpretive space for comparative literature studies. The article examines hybrid images in Mo Yan’s works, using Shangguan Jintong from “Big Breasts and Wide Hips” and Chen Bi from “Frog”, to show how Mo Yan learns from Western literature while conveying his stance on Sino-Western literary exchange. Employing imagology, it analyzes both internal and external textual aspects and compares these images with Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Faulkner to discuss shared human life experience, then traces how Western influence supports Mo Yan’s unification of world and national literature.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages7

Reading Time18 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Western literature influence on Mo Yan

“Root-Searching Literature” and literary ideology

Text Analysis Based on Imagology

Definition and scope of imagological images

Cultural hybridity and mixed-race identity as image carrier

Internal Text Analysis--Identity and Cultural Destination

Shangguan Jintong’s mixed-race identity and conflict

Chen Bi’s mixed-race identity and tragic pursuit

Harmonious and Tear: An Imagological Investigation of the “Hybrid” in Mo Yan's Novels Chenxin Zheng Department of Chinese Literature, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, China [1263447849@qq.com](1263447849@qq.com) Keywords: imagology, world literature, hybrid image Abstract: Mo Yan's literary creation, with its rich integration of world literature, folk resources and classical literature, has a broad space for interpretation in the field of comparative literature. Hybrid images in Mo Yan’s works, taking example of Shangguan Jintong from “Big Breasts and Wide Hips”and Chen Bi from “Frog”, reflect that Mo Yan draws lessons from western literature, also imply Mo Yan's attitude towards literary exchanges between Chinese and western world. Based on imagology, the article conducts the study from two aspects, the internal and external of the text, and Mo Yan’s hybrid images will be compared with Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Faulkner's works, to discuss the literary writing of common human life experience, and how the western literature influence on Mo Yan in the content of the literature, then induce Mo Yan’s unification of world literature and national literature. 1. Introduction The influx of Western literature created a splash in Mo's career in the 1980s. In all kinds of foreign literary thoughts, the clash of literary ideas and techniques has promoted the meeting of the world's great literary minds. Mo Yan once admitted that the two works that had the greatest influence on him were Garcia Marquez's “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and Faulkner's “The Sound and the Fury”. Mo Yan does not deny that Western literature nourishes him, but at the sametime he is not satiated with external ingested. Instead, he urgently calls out the style of“Root-Searching Literature”: “Chinese writer’s roots must be rooted into the soil of Chinese culture before they can form their own artistic style and art world, and their roots can be developed and fluffy ”. As a result, Mo Yan's literary ideology presents the unity and opposition between the world and the nation. In the harmony and tension between the “subject” and “the other”, some classical hybrid images emerge at the historic moment. 2. Text Analysis Based on Imagology The imagology of comparative literature is the theoretical basis for the study of Mo Yan’s hybrid image. In Mocha's definition, this image “is the image of the foreign country, the image of a people, and finally, the image created by a writer's particular feelings. In “Big Breasts and Wide Boots”, Shangguan Jintong is the child of Shangguan Lu's adulteration with a Swedish priest, while in“Frog”, Chen Bi is the child of Chen Er and his wife from the Soviet Union. In the sense of blood and culture, they are both products of the combination of Chinese and Western culture, so they fall within the scope of imagological research. The cultural hybridity of mixed-race identity can be regarded as the carrier of Mo Yan's cultural psychology to a certain extent. This conclusion is based on Barlow's emphasis on “gazer”. He believes that images are “reorganized and rewritten in accordance with the acceptance procedures in the gazers' culture, and these patterns and procedures are pre-existing in images”. That is to say, the writing of images is “a creative imagination conceived basically according to absence”. Then, when the research focuses on the gazer, the cultural image of Mo Yan, the creative subject, will be presented through the extraction of the mixed blood image. Copyright © (2021) Francis Academic Press, UK 126 DOI: 10.25236/soshu.2021.026 This paper will explore the cultural significance of the mixed race image from the internal and external aspects of the text. Starting with the words, hierarchical relations and plot inside the text, we can grasp the characteristics of the characters more accurately through the form of language and plot. On the external text, because the creation of the text image

FAQs

What does the imagological approach focus on in Mo Yan’s hybrid images?

It investigates both internal textual elements (words, hierarchical relations, plot) and external factors (historical, social, and cultural context) to explain how hybrid identities are constructed and interpreted.

Which characters are used as key examples of hybrid images?

Shangguan Jintong from “Big Breasts and Wide Hips” and Chen Bi from “Frog” are used to discuss cultural causes and symbolic significance of mixed-race images.

How does the paper describe Mo Yan’s attitude toward Western literature influence?

The paper argues that Mo Yan absorbs lessons from Western literature while calling for rooted “Root-Searching Literature,” presenting a unity and opposition between world and nation in his literary ideology.

Aug 27, 2026

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