SOURCE: Hegel, Robert E. “Man as Responsible Being: The Individual, Social Role, and Heaven.” In The Novel in Seventeenth-Century China,, pp 105-39. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.
In this essay, Hegel examines the portrayal of individualism and self-indulgence in novels, including The Merry Adventures of Emperor Yang and Forgotten Tales of the Sui. Hegel finds that themes of fatalism and responsibility to the larger community counter individual expression for seventeenth-century Chinese authors.
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