The polymorphous oeuvre of the artist Gao Xingjian 高行健 – born in China (1940), French citizen since 1998, now fully bilingual and bicultural – witnesses the devoted longing for a broader expressive richness in language, resulting from the elaboration of his primary linguistic and cultural awareness, and of another linguistic and cultural heritage, that has been consciously chosen and assimilated. This article examines one aspect of literary creation, that is the Sinophone critical oeuvre, through the essay Ziyou yu wenxue 〈自由與文學〉(2014). By observing the thematic and linguistic profiles we will discover that: firstly, there is a complementary plurality of languages, a tension towards a stratification of discourses and codes drawing from different – diatopically and diachronically speaking – linguistic and cultural systems, revealed by an intertextual and transcultural reading; secondly, in this essay characterized by heteroglossia – as a Bakhtinian concept (Bakhtin 1979) – the ontological clash arising from a plural linguistic and cultural awareness can often be solved by an intra-textual dialogic dimension.

Abbagnano, Nicola, e Giovanni Fornero. 2000. Protagonisti e testi della filosofia, vol. D, t. 1. Torino: Paravia Bruno Mondadori.

Abbiati, Magda. 1998. Grammatica di cinese moderno. Venezia: Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina.

Bachtin, Michail. 1979. Estetica e romanzo: Un contributo fondamentale alla ‘scienza della letteratura’. Torino: Einaudi.

Bauman, Richard. 2004. A World of Others’ Words. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Intertextuality. Oxford: Blackwell.

Bouvier-Laffitte, Béatrice. 2013. “Francophonie chinoise: Langues et identités en tension dans les oeuvres de Dai Sijie, Gao Xingjian et Ying Chen”. International Journal of Francophone Studies 16 (3): 263-268. [02/05/2016]. http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/ijfs.16.3.263_1.

Cheng, Anne. 2000. Storia del pensiero cinese, voll. 1 e 2. Torino: Einaudi.

Cheng, Anne. 2012. “La ricezione del concetto di libertà in Cina”. Antiquorum philosophia: An International Journal 6: 11-18.

Corti, Maria. 1978. II viaggio testuale. Le ideologie e le strutture semiotiche. Torino: Einaudi.

Gao, Xingjian 高行健. 2014. Ziyou yu wenxue 《自由與文學》. Taipei: Lianjing chuban gongsi. Griffiths, Paul. 1994. On Being Buddha: The Classical Doctrine of Buddhahood. New Yok: State University of New York Press.

Grutman, Rainier. 2002. “Les motivations de l’hétérolinguisme: réalisme, composition, esthétique”. In Eteroglossia e plurilinguismo letterario. Atti del XVIII Convegno Interuniversitario di Bressanone, a cura di Furio Brugnolo e Vincenzo Orioles, 329-349. Roma: Il Calamo.

Grutman, Rainier. 2005. “La textualisation de la diglossie dans les littératures francophones”. Dans Des cultures en contact: visions de l’Amérique du Nord francophone, édité par Jean Morency, Hélène Destrempes, Denise Merkle, et Martin Pâquet, 201-223. Québec: Nota Bene.

Haney, William. 2002. Culture and Consciousness: Literature Regained. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press.

He Henry Yuhuai, ed. 2001. Dictionary of the Political Thought of People’s Republic of China/Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Zhengzhi Wenhua Yongyu Da Dian 中華人民共和國政治文化用語大典. New York: East Gate Book.

Jorgensen, John. 2005. Inventing Hui-Neng, the Sixth Patriarch: Hagiography and Biography in Early Ch’an. Leiden: Brill Academic.

Kong Shuyu. 2014. “Ma Jian and Gao Xingjian: Intellectual Nomadism and Exilic Consciousness in Sinophone Literature”. Canadian Review of Comparative Literature / Revue canadienne de littérature comparée 41 (2): 126-146. [31/01/2016]. doi: 0319–051x/14/41.2/126.

Kristeva, Julia. 1978. Semeiotiké. Ricerche per una semanalisi. Milano: Feltrinelli.

Lavagnino, Alessandra, e Silvia Pozzi. 2013. Cultura cinese. Segno, scrittura e civiltà. Roma: Carocci.

Sabban, Françoise. 1980. Idiotismes quadrisyllabiques en chinois moderne. Paris: Langages Croises.

Segre, Cesare. 1985. Avviamento all’analisi del testo letterario. Torino: Einaudi.

Shih, Shu-Mei. 2005. “Global Literature and the Technologies of Recognition”. PMLA 119 (1): 16-30.

Steiner, George. 2003. Extraterritorialité. Essai sur la littérature et la révolution du langage. Paris: Hachette.

Wang Meng 王蒙 - Fiorenzo Lafirenza. 2004. Nuovi chengyu. Venezia: Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina.

Yeung, Jessica. 2008. Ink Dances in Limbo: Gao Xingjian’s Writing as Cultural Translation. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Kindle Ed.

Zhang Yingjin. 2005. “Cultural Translation between the World and the Chinese: The Problematics in Positioning Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian”. Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 31 (2): 127-144.