“A Wider and Stranger Space”: World Literature and World-building in Xue Yiwei’s Fiction
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Through references to Xue Yiwei’s (1964–) emigration to Canada, the translation of his works into English, and his repeated discussion of Western authors, the majority of critics have emphasized Xue’s global outlook. However, to date, there has been relatively little discussion of the ways in which his engagement with the world has shaped his writing. This article considers how Xue Yiwei attempts to “transcend the boundaries of language” and create what he calls a “wider and stranger space for literature” against the background of a historically fraught relationship between Chinese and World literature. What does this space look like? Where can we locate it in relation to China and in relation to the world? How does Xue attempt to shape this space through his writing? This article considers these questions from three angles: Xue’s repeated use of explicit intertextuality, the multilingual and polyphonic nature of his writing, and the way in which his books have circulated beyond China. Despite continuing unevenness in the global literary field, this article argues for points of creative agency in Xue Yiwei’s attempt to “dialogue with the world.”
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.012 | 0.026 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".