This dissertation closely examines the works of five modern Chinese authors from the twenties to the late eighties in the context of the remembrance of the past. The authors studied are Shen Congwen, Xiao Hong, Bai Xianyong, Zhang Xianliang and Mo Yan. Going beyond the paradigm established by Lu Xun, these writers testify to a past--both national and personal--that is traumatic and fragmented by historical circumstances. Consequently their narratives, which are motivated by traumatic happenings, on the one hand, try to recreate the past, while on the other hand, deny the possibility of such an endeavor. The analysis of these authors makes evident inherent literary discontinuities in modern Chinese literature of the twentieth century which are echoed by the historical discontinuities. Such relentless discontinuity, defined as symptomatic of the period's literature, nonetheless becomes a form of continuity.
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