A review of the comparative study of Mo Yan and Faulkner in China

Abstract Mo Yan’s multi-layered and allegorical tales were highly inspired by William Faulkner. Mo Yan’s semi-fictional Gaomi Northeast Township was often linked to William Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha, and he himself was extolled by the Chinese scholars to be “China’s Faulkner.” Inside China, there have emerged a great number of comparative studies on Faulkner and Mo Yan, which are usually conducted from the perspectives of literary forms, native-soil complex, attitudes towards tradition, the influence of local culture, and so on. However, despite the strong record of research on these two writers in China, there is still room for improvement in the study, for after the initial stage of the superficial and sporadic comparison between individual works, the comparative study of Faulkner and Mo Yanis in pressing need of comprehensive and systematic research of these criticisms.