Tree-Burning: Yu Hua and Can Xue as Writers of the Rhizome

The thesis explores how Chinese avant-garde writers Yu Hua and Can Xue’s early short fictions pose a profound stylistic and structural challenge to existing conventions of realist fictions in China. It mainly uses the idea of “rhizome” as a concept developed by Deleuze and Guattari to highlight two major attributes of these fictional works. These are 1) the tremendous interpretive freedom allowed and 2) the aesthetic integrity of the art works to exempt them from being didactic. As an important accompanying argument, the thesis will also use “rhizome” to challenge the popular attempts at reading these two avant-garde writers’ works as representations of reality.