| Since the19th century, China is on the way from a feudal empire to an independent nation. It experienced a transition from tradition to modern under the double pressure of internal transmutation and external shocks. Modernization and urbanization became the key political demands in the period. City, especially the port city like Shanghai becomes a major field of implementing these demands. Shanghai, as its situation of colonial city is in synchrony with China’s modern history, has been regarded as Providing the key of illustrating what happened and what will happen, which induces an research increase of Shanghai as the center of modern urban construction and urban Literary. But modern intellectuals’"Obsession with China"(as American scholar Xia Zhiqing said), excessive dependence on modernity, make the " nation-state " and " enlightenment salvation " become the mainstream narrative in the20th century Chinese Literature history. The city and daily life modernity are limited to some extent. Literature study of Shanghai shows a phenomenon of delocalization and overloading meaning. Therefore, taking the urban life as the core study object, through history and its literary text reading, reducing writer’s historical context and psychological picture during the process of urban transition, thus highlighting the "China Experience" and the local characteristics of literary Shanghai has become necessary.From traditional small town to the Republic metropolis, from the deformative city to the comprehensive transformation and repressed Republic City, from the late1980s’ urban life gradual recovery under the shock of commodity economy to the contemporary urban metropolis repositioning and overall expansion and modernization, Centenary Shanghai experienced vicissitudes, and its biggest hit is rapid transition from traditional rural way of life to urban life, which fits the whole historical process of China, the differences are only the scope, depth, manifestations and time delay. Therefore, the concern to Shanghai is the concern to Chinese urbanization and urban way of life, and also the concern to contemporary China and the world’s biggest reality. "Urbanism as a Way of Life" is put forward by a member of the Chicago School--Louis Wirth."Urbanism" can be differed with rural life from three aspects of social ecology perspectives, a social organization form with spiritual personality and psychological experience feature. Studying urban life on the aspects of spiritual personality and psychological experience feature demonstrates Wirth’s mentoring relationship with German early sociologist-Georg Simmel and reflects western urban sociology’s logic process "from the demonstration to the humanity." which is correspond to the individual emotional and spiritual ecology in Chinese urban literary creation and research field, has also become an important theoretical resources for this paper.Research on urban life can not ignore the daily life, because the major adjustment of social structure and the changes of urban life can be reflected in the areas of daily life, as Simmel points out:"Even the most common, humble life form, is also the expression of a more general social and cultural order. Therefore, to track changes of urban literature through the daily life has become an important research method. In modern literature, enlightenment, salvation and the grand narrative becomes overwhelming force, resulting in that daily life is intentionally or unintentionally obscured in urban literature and research field. Research on literature Shanghai from the perspective of daily life helps to "get rid of all sorts of myth of the rule of rewriting Shanghai history, restoring people’s feelings and memories to the richness and complexity of historical experience.Since the new era, with the prosperity of the market economy, the rise of civil society, independent value of daily life began to be recognized. The impact and theoretical resources with the change of "daily life" in foreign sociology and philosophy fields make research of urban literature on the perspective of daily life possible. A large number of research achievements have emerged. These achievements provide lessons and open ideas, at the same time it also shows the current status of the study weaknesses:1. Associating "daily life" narrative with modernity weakened the daily life of urban area, thus we can’t find distinguishing feature "of daily life between the modern world and the pre-modern society life.2. Due to excessive focus on modernity, just from a single reflecting point of view, regard the "daily life in literature" as the vassal of "daily life in reality" without seeing the dialectical relationship between the two; writers as the main part of urban daily life, their daily practice full of experience, their boycott and beyond to the daily life, are often overlooked.3. Study findings are more concentrated on the narrative form of a single writer’s daily life, on the whole, it is scattered and the system has not yet formed. Till now, there is no systematic study to the20th century’"Literature in Shanghai" on the perspective of "daily life".In view of this, the author choose "daily life and literature in Shanghai"as the topic of the paper, and locates the position in the most important city of20th century—Shanghai. What new qualities does the "urbanism", as a kind of living style, actually bring to literature from the perspective of daily life by referring to the theoretical sources of urban sociology, time geography and daily life criticism and by studying deliberately the representative writers’works?In this paper, the author will analyze the following topics on the symbiotic interaction with literary texts and city text:what daily reality "Shanghai" showed according to writers in the20th century? What differences do writers reproduce this "reality"? What causes the difference? What are the common characteristics or the rule of Shanghai’s "daily life narrative"? What contribution does it have to the construction of the Shanghai literary image? During the changing process from country to urban life, what kind of experience has been provided by these writers on the aspect of integrity of city and people?The focus of the paper is the new variable to the literature Shanghai brought by the urban life, so the selected representative writers and works focused on literary imagination with following characteristics:it is primarily a work created by the writer who lived in Shanghai; in addition, the writers paid their attention to dasein life in Shanghai consciously, the mark of era and geographical features can be seen clearly in the work; Furthermore, the writers observed, studied and thought about the urban life, this is often reflected in the tracing, reproduction and criticism of urban life:either consciously observed Shanghai as a whole body or paid attention to the figure between the line of rural and urban, or focused on the domestic hide and sectional change of urban life under the dense atmosphere of era. In the analysis of the current status of research on urban literature, combined with personal interest and the feasibility of study innovation, the author finally mainly focused on four writers Han Bangqing, Lu Xun, Zhang Ailing, Wang anyi, study their experimental and unique urban writing in fiction and prose. These writers’ writing on "literary Shanghai" all avoid the grand narrative tradition in the urban modernity, and concerned about daily, civil and private life of Shanghai’s change, and constructed literature of "urban folk" as Chen Sihe presented, their writing are full of plain sociology and daily life flavor as opposed to exaggerated and distorted, transplant imagine writing style of Shanghai. Their contribution can not be avoided on the aspect of depicting urban life in different periods and construction of Shanghai literary figures. Their entering, facing and writing the daily practice of the city also forms the part of the urbanization process, and influence or formulate their writing. The author tried to analyze the uniqueness of the writers’psychological characteristics, daily life practice and reproduction. And recur the figures under the20th century writers and their richness of integrity between the city and people, the city and literature, and inspire creativity and vitality in practice study.Overall innovation is reflected in the paper:1. Grasping urban life and urban literature on the perspective of life style, providing a new aspect for urban literature and cultural study;2. Through analyzing and organizing writing characteristics of different historical periods, reproduced20th century daily life picture of literature in Shanghai;3. Widely cited western urban sociology, daily life and space research theory in the urban literature research field, demonstrating the innovative research methods.In addition to introduction and conclusion, the paper is divided into five chapters.Introduction aims at the reasons and necessities of choosing the topic, in which the logical structure and framework are displayed. Firstly, the author analyze Shanghai’s special status in modern China and urban-rural relationship pattern, indicating the reason of selecting20th-century Shanghai as a basis for study of urban life change; Second, point out theoretical starting point and research basis based on organizing relevant research achievements and current research status, Furthermore, introduce the overall framework and logical structure of the paper. Finally, point out the specific methods of the study. The body part of this paper ranges from chapter1to chapter4. The author doesn’t intend to construct consistent framework and interpreting ways.Chapter I:daily presence of urban onset---Han Bangqing. The author takes Han Bangqing’s city lives and his writing experiences as examples to describe the new changes of the metropolis in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China and to discuss the pioneering significance of Sing-Song Girls of Shanghai in early urban daily writings, the creative of urban writing forms and the reasons why this work has repeatedly been abandoned. First, through the comparison of the prostitutes’ communication forms in Ming and Qing Dynasties and their emotional and performing lives to reveal that because of the involvement of money and desire, Sing-Song Girls of Shanghai caused the complication of brothels emotional form. By the comparison of two kinds of emotional forms and urban spaces to reveal the precarious reality of the traditional families, social structures and ethical values in urban onset period and the irretrievable "lost" of the classical private garden which has not been affected by the erosion. Second, draw on the spatiotemporal dynamic map of the time and space in geography to analyze the new change, the mixed transportation which brings the complexity of mobile in time and form of late Qing novel and the significance of move mode in urban space construction.(At last, through the analysis of journal practice created by the gentry group who was in the process of traditional social structure adjustment and Han Bangqing and the catastrophe of discarding Sing-Song Girls of Shanghai three times by readers to discuss the contradiction among scholars’interests, reading enlightenment and newspaper writing, to analyze the complex existence between the failure of traditional daily life and the opening of modern daily life and to indicate the pioneering significance in urban daily writing tradition.) The innovation point of this chapter is to draw the inner reference among the complex move mode of analyzing Sing-Song Girls of Shanghai from the time geography theory and space theory, and to indicate the outstanding value of this novel is to open a completely different space form of writing which differs from the traditional diachronic legendary version and the writer’s obvious urban consciousness and the panoramic intention of the city show. Bring the recent controversial novel Sing-Song Girls of Shanghai into urban literature research system and help to promote the understanding of the literary value and evaluation of Sing-Song Girls of Shanghai.Chapter II:the criticism and photographer of the colonial city---Lu Xun. This chapter focuses on Lu Xun’s ten years life in Shanghai and his essay creation, analyzes the effect of city life for Lu Xun’s late essay writing, introduces the national criticism of Shanghai colonial context and the minute adjustment of enlightenment position; describes his capture of people and sceneries in colonial cities and his cultural perspective, his resistance to the rights of the urban culture, all of this shows the accurate grasp of daily city and his outstanding wisdom. At first, the author analyzes Lu Xun by walking the city, living peacefully in his alley and reading newspapers, by doing this can make a connection with the city, therefore it can make a conclusion that Lu Xun is a bystander who lives far away from the city but always cares the city affairs and he also plays the role of cultural symbol of urban character, then the author related Lu Xun’s essays on all kinds of lives of urban population in the semi colonies to history photography, and discussed its daily-life and visuality characteristics in Lu Xun’s latter essays and the important position of essays in his all historical writings by analyzing the connection between essay writing and photography. Besides, Lu Xun described the daily-life phenomenon from multi-angle. The struggle to book and newspaper censorship in1930s reflected his wisdom to resist power. His criticism to the literary grimace of commodity business era reflected the intellectuals’moral insistence. All of these have the same focus:realization of "cultivating person" and cultural criticism in the background of Commodification and colonies. The innovation point of this chapter is to break the traditional research of paranoia pure literature stylistic and bring Lu Xun’s late essays into the vision of urban research. Referring to the photographic theory of Roland Barthes’Camera Lucida and Lefebver’s daily-life criticism theoties, the author analyzes and discusses the symbiotic relationship of writers and the city, questions that only takinng local writing as "positive pulse" of Lu Xun’s study in Lu Xun’s research field. It is also a breakthrough of taking Haipai in urban culture study as a stereotype in Shanghai city research. Chapter III:daily presence of times nightmare:Zhang Ailing. in this chapter, The author mainly discusses Zhang Ailing’urban life writing under the background of space-time block. She thinks that only the daily life placed under the background of "chaos", her passion attached to daily life and common people can be understood. through the analysis of Zhang Ailing’s drama in the novel and drama in the daily life, the author analyzes the second round characteristics of urban life she has mentioned many times combining with the text; Second, by borrowing related theory on self-presentation of second generation scholar Owen govemann, the Chicago sociology school, study Shanghai citizen’s indifference between interpersonal communication form and family relationship during the transiting era of traditional and modern society in Zhang Ailing’s novels. Just through exposing the figure’"pretend" through multiple images, Zhang Ailing reflects to the transcendence of common people and profound mediation of the urban life. Moreover, through organizing the writing of two spaces:mansion and apartment, analyzes traditional family life inappropriate and distortion of the bizarre under the urban civilization, as well as the middle class’traditional moral pressure, they constituted the times nightmare of the figure in the works and it is difficult to get rid of.In addition, the discovery of Zhang Ailing to domestic space and the maximum development provides the connection channel between function of space and family political structure. Finally, through the analysis of characteristics and reason of "bright vision moment" and "text block" in the novel, revealing the fundamental influence to Zhang Ailing’s novel creation from historical situation of "blockade", so as to understand the author’s addiction and surpass to urban daily life in Chaos. The biggest innovations in this chapter is to borrow the theory of "self presentation of daily life" to analyze Zhang Ailing’s urban relationships, in addition, apartment life, drama of daily life and unique analysis of daily practice are rarely concerned by the researchers before.Chapter Ⅳ:alley eco-lasting followers:Wang Anyi. The main concern of this chapter is writing about Shanghai by Wang Anyi(a new era writer), its core content is the discovery and full writing of alley in Shanghai. Through analyzing many aspects of alley ecology, which includes the major structure, intrusion and disturbance, civil ethics and life logic, some spiritual strength like myths, legends and rumors maintaining ecological stability and continuity and other natural features of alley as a unique architectural, revealing the multi-faceted meaning of alley. Secondly, analyze the subjective intention of Wang Anyi alley ecological writing behind history view and aesthetic of daily life and finding the rational intentions of sober "looking for Shanghai" behind elegiac writing for alley ecology and aesthetic of daily life. Innovation of this chapter is that the concept of alley ecology and comprehensive three-dimensional analysis has been put forward for the first time.Chapter V is a comprehensive evaluation and analysis basing on the writer’s monograph. Centering on the subject of maid, the writer uses different narration perspectives and modes to show the relation between writers and cities and tests the different and unique characteristic of the writer’s description of daily life through different narrative angles and reappearing methods to maids’lives under writers of different eras. It analyzes their career awareness, interpersonal relationship and emotional lives, especially transformation of urban intimacy embodied by the emotional forms of adultery, illicit cohabitation and cohabitation etc.In the part of postscript an integrated cognition is proposed. It is thought that the description of100years of daily life in Shanghai has great relationship to the aspects of prosperity of commodity economy, formation of citizen stratums and the loose of political environment. Though great things restrain daily life, it can also promote the rebound to the daily life narration and the writer’s resist or exceeding to daily life. It’s just because the description to daily life with personality, input of complicated emotion, resist and exceeding to daily life as well, the experiencing encounter of writers and cities offers unique and reasonable Chinese experience for the20th century urban literature. |
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