Abstract: This paper proposes that historical lives are an important source of Chinese novels and modern Chinese novels are no exception, in particular the generic characters. Through the analysis of Lu Xun’s The True Story of Ah Q, Wang Anyi’s Our Uncle’s story and some typical novels by women writers in the 1990s, this paper attempts to prove that the parody, appropriation and mimesis of the form of biography not only herald the advent of modern Chinese novels, but also develop the intriguing rhetorics of modern Chinese novels.

Key words: form of biography; modern novels; parody, mimesis; rhetoric

Wang Kan, Ph.D., is a Professor of Literature at School of Humanities, Hangzhou Normal University. His research interest is contemporary Chinese literature. His recent publications include: The Politics in Translation and Reading (2013), Individualism, Gender Construction and Modernity (2013), The Critics’s Urge for Legislation (2012), The Scholarship That Mutinies (2012).