Traveling Experience And Cultural Imagination

The title of this dissertation is "Traveling Experience and Cultural Imagination------to Analyzethe Occurrence of the Chinese Modern Literature from the Perspective of the Travel Notes". According to the travel notes in the period from the late Qing Dynasty to "May 4^th movement" around, the dissertation surveys the function of the travel notes in the process of occurrence of the Chinese modern literature, and the relationship between the travel notes and the various links. The purposes are as follows: research the travel notes and the literature from culture and society; find out the travel notes' active track in the Chinese modern literary field; reveal the relationship between the travel notes in the period from the late Qing Dynasty to "May 4^th movement" around and some problems' occurrence, such as the social concept, the modern writers, the modern style; revalue the travel notes in the special historical period.The dissertation has six parts.The introduction shows two subjects. The first subject puts forward the perspective of the travel notes, analyzes its research value. Some close concepts are compared and defined, for example, "wander", "tour" and "travel"; "travel note", "tourism literature" and "literature about wandering". "Travel" is regarded as the main concept of the dissertation. "Travel note" is considered as the prose about the true traveling information. Then, the recently achievement of the research would be introduced. The second subject is the theoretical demonstration about the perspective. It points out the two key words: "traveling experience" and "cultural imagination", which are the important concepts to the dissertation. Their functions are that we can understand the characters of the travel notes in this period, and approach this perspective about the occurrence of the Chinese modern literature though them. With the change of the Chinese situation, the modern transformation of the traveling experience has reflected the modern experience directly, has influenced the content of the travel notes in the late Qing Dynasty. Furthermore, the underlying discourse in the travel notes was consisted by the cultural imagination of the landscape and the image that resulted from the space-time of travel.The first chapter is the research about the context of society and concept. By the way of investing the characteristic times, the time frame from the late Qing Dynasty to "May 4^th movement" around is set up, which influenced the occurrence of the Chinese modern literature. The dissertation demonstrates separately the social current political situation and the thought culture and the traveling development in the late Qing Dynasty and after 1912 these two periods, introduces the traveling characters and the travel notes. The profound localism and the narrow worldview which were based on the Chinese traditional regional view are the Chinese traditional time-space views, so that it woule have spent a long time to establish the modern worldview in the masses by communicating since the late Qing Dynasty. The comprehensive absorbent classical traveling experience was easy to cause the expansion of the classical center view, and form the esthetic object that was called "under the sun" landscape. With the emergence of the repulsive divided modern traveling experience, this landscape has been replaced by the "world" landscape. This process was advantageous to form the modern nation-state idea.The second chapter discusses the relationship between the travel notes and the innovation of the social concept. The transformation of the social concept was the important content in the social context of the occurrence of the Chinese modern literature. The cultural values and the worldview have been playing the control role in the traveler's consciousness or unconsciousness since the late Qing Dynasty, which directly affected the occurrence of the Chinese modern literature. This chapter shows how the travel notes recorded the change of the social concept by the way of analyzing the world and the nations in the travel notes. From the Chinese cultural community, the imagination of the western society and the restructure of Chinese society were built by the collective action in the travel notes since the late Qing Dynasty. These travel notes embodied lots of phenomenons, included the pursuit of the Chinese traditional mode, the protection of the Chinese culture, the description of the foreign utopia, the alternative to the Japanese experience. After 1912, the multiplex cultural contradiction gradually desalinated. These travelers began to think the cultural deference, the road of the Chinese social reformation and the Chinese cultural value. Meanwhile, take Dao and Qi as the example, according to the analysis about the stereotypes' change in the travel notes since the late Qing Dynasty, the change reflected the public comformation of the collective imagination through a kind of the basic comformation. From the late Qing Dynasty to 1912 after, the foreign image transformed from ideological to Utopian, which revealed the relationship between the imaginations on foreign places and "self-truth", explained how the travel notes reacted to the social concept, and proved the channel of the travel notes.The third chapter discusses the relationship between the travel notes and the Chinese modern writers. Their inner world and mental mechanism in traveler came from the common unconsciousness of human being. They hoped to change the habitus and transform the spirit. Simultaneously, they maintained some Chinese traditional traveling point of view and the time mark, which affected their traveling experience and cultural imagination in the travel notes. Many modern writers benefited from the traveling experience. Moreover, they would be able to seek the inspiration in the later travel constantly, would gain the more knowledge. The new traveling experience brought the new view to these Chinese modern writers, developed their writing potential, and changed their thought tendency, finally changed the appearance of the Chinese modern literature. The travel notes have recorded their inner course. On the one hand, the traveling experience from the late Qing Dynasty to "May 4^th movement" around affected the cultural identity of the modern writers, promoted the inter-cultural communication. On the other hand, it affected the modern intellectual's formation by the various traveling cultural tribes.The dissertation researches how the travel notes could improve the modern literary style in the fourth chapter. From the late Qing Dynasty to "May 4^th movement" around, the transformations of prose and novel were related to the travel notes. In the prose aspect, the dissertation elaborates the relationship between the travel notes and the modern prose from five problems. They are the change of the prose style in the late Qing Dynasty, the cross-style language of the travel notes in the late Qing Dynasty, the occurrence of the new style and the trend of the travel notes, the style and genre of the two travel notes which Quqiubai wrote after "May 4^th movement", and the boundary between the travel notes and the reportage. The modern literary style was affected by the large-scale occurrence of the cross-style language in the travel notes on foreign places in the late Qing Dynasty. The transformation of the literary style was based on the diary-style and the political-genre. "Grand narrative" is the cultural context of the multiplex style. In the novel aspect, started from Travels of Laocan, because the modern travel-note-style novels narrated by limiting the narrative point of view, which is different with the traditional travel-note-style novels. The traveling metaphor in the travel-note-style novels and the objectification of the traveling experience and the cultural imagination in the fictions were the special effects when the travel notes united the novels.The last part is the conclusion. As far as the occurrence of the Chinese modern literature is concerned, the travel notes from the late Qing Dynasty to "May 4^th movement" around have the particularity of time and literature. So we should evaluate their function and effect fairly.