The Sad Song Of The Hongkong Loafer

Taking the Hongkong novels (mainly in the 1950s and 1960s) during the 25 years after the second World War as an integral whole, this dissertation focuses on the analysis of the characters, the images and metaphors, and reveals the artistic motivations, the mutual creative patterns, the peculiar elements and motifs in these works. Through studying on the key motif ?the process of loss and pursuit, which is named as the picaresque mode, it traces back the genealogical images of the " Hongkong loafer", its archetype and its displacements, from which we can learn the cultural significance of this peculiar image.First of all, this dissertation has a chronological description of the social history and the novels of the 1950s and the 1960s in Hongkong. Then it goes on to the dynamic analysis of the native, the metropolitan, the tragic, the civilian and modern traits of Hongkong novels. The basic frame of this dissertation includes: One center, which is a human study on the characters of the novels through the perspectives of the life aesthetics, the existentialism and the psycho- analysis; Two dimensions, which explore the native and cosmopolitan traits of these novels, the peculiarity of Hongkong literature, the Hongkong sensibility, the influence of Hongkong cosmopolitan culture on its literature, and the ways through which Hongkong novels reflect the city; And two lines, which include a longitudinal survey and an analysis of the civilian and modern traits of these novels, "the subaltern narratives" and "the refugee literature", the origins, the transformations and the special traits of Modern Hongkong literature, esp. "the drunkard phenomenon ".Moreover, this dissertation devotes one exclusive chapter to the bantering and anti-intelligence "absurd realism" in Jingyong's At Whose Hand will the Deer Die. The conclusion is that the novels of this period are peculiar products of the Hongkong cosmopolitan culture and the native culture, which has recorded the experience of Hongkong history and society and demonstrated the life experience of Hongkong people, thus becomes the invaluable treasures of Chinese literature which distinguish from the mainland and the Taiwan literature.