This dissertation sets out to explore the emergence of a
literary institution on the periphery of mainstream cultural
sphere, with examples taken from Mahua wenxue, the Chinese-
Malaysian literature. It also attempts to examine,through such a
Third-World case, how a marginal and migrant literary system
responses to the local and metropolitan socio-cultural and
political modernityand the subsequent formation of a national
cultural identity. It is, specifically, a study of phenomena
such as contact and interference among the co-existing systems
in a polysystem. As an introduction, the first chapter
explicates the general properties, procedures and working
mechanisms of Itamar Even-Zohar''s polysystem theory of literary
study, the theoretical framework I employ inthis dissertation.
The second chapter traces the emergence of a literary polysystem
in an empirical case: Mahua wenxue. Being a dependent system,
its emergence is the result of historical, social, and literary
contacts with China. The third chapter argues that a national
literature has to be constructed as an alternative system
against the dominant foreign or imported literature. It thus
focuses on the nationalized process of Mahua wenxue from the
late 1920s to the eve of the nation''s independence. Following a
chronological order, the fourth chapter deals with the Modernism
autonomization of Chinese-Malaysian literature in the process of
itmodernization. The endeavor of Tan Swie Hian the poet and the
Generation of 1968 in producing a Modernist repertoire is
inderlined here. The last chapter concludes with a (re)
definition of Mahua wenxue: An institution of Chinese literature
exists as a minor literature outside of China, Taiwan, and Hong
KOng, and forms part of a literary polysystem that has produced
texts written and published in Chinese, Malay, and English. Such
a literature has distinguisheditself in the process of
nationalization and autonomization.