An Alternate Imagination of China: A Study of the 'Visuality' in Liu Na'ou, Mu Shiying and Eileen Chang's Fiction

Fiction has emerged as a major medium for modern Chinese to express their imagination and 'narrate' the country since Liang Qichao advocated the importance of 'New Fiction'. Over the past century, fiction (including both its form and content) has undergone various changes in response to the transformation of the modern Chinese society. In 1993, David Der-wei Wang initiated a discussion on 'Imagination of China', examining how Chinese people imagined the past, present and future of the country through fiction as a means of fabricated narration. While diegesis is a literary concept central to Realism and lyric constitutes a typical form of Romanticism, visual expression is the technique representative of Modernism. This method was first introduced to Shanghai by Liu Na'ou from colonial Taiwan and it exerted tremendous impacts on the works of Mu Shiying and Eileen Chang subsequently. The present dissertation sought to address two main questions pertaining to 'visuality'. First, how did the fictions of Liu Na'ou, Mu Shiying and Eileen Chang use visual expression for imagination of China? A related concern was how this approach reflected and molded the modern experience of China. Second, how was this particular mode of imagination related to other forms of imagination of the time? Also, what was its association with the politics and ideology in the arena of power? This dissertation did not only analyze the visual properties of this particular mode of imagination, but also examined the power issues underlying the technique, including colonialism and post-colonialism, literature and image, as well as man and woman.;There are five chapters in the dissertation. The first chapter introduces the framework, method, and background of the research. Chapter two examines how Liu Na'ou, Mu Shiying and Eileen Chang imported, migrated and mimicked the visual perceptions of colonists when expressing their imagination of China. On the one hand, this kind of imagination closely resembled the mentality of colonists such as France and Japan. On the other hand, the three authors strived to make modifications, formed critical judgments and reflected on the roles of the colonizer and the colonized during the process of imagination. All these were manifested in the changes in the form of presentation characterizing their fictions. As such, examination of these changes relative to the literature from the 1930s to 1940s is another focus of this chapter. Chapter three explores how Liu Na'ou, Mu Shiying and Eileen Chang incorporated the visual features of movies into fictions when expressing their imagination of modern China. The interaction between literature and image (especially the influence of movie on the presentation of fiction) inspired the three authors to come up with an alternative perceptive regarding imagination of China. The intersection of fiction and movie also allowed more room for fictitious creation, giving rise to a different mode of imagination beyond those featuring Realism and Romanticism. Some other issues covered in this chapter include why and how this approach guided the imagination of readers in designated time and space, as well as its relationship with the national discourse. Chapter four discussed the problems concerning imagination of China with reference to visuality and alternation in sexual subjectivity. Male vision could be identified in the fictions of Liu Na'ou and Mu Shiying. However, under the symbolic system of patriarchal culture, such male vision, when compared with the vision of the colonizer, is apparently less prominent in terms of male subjectivity. In their fictions, female characters are usually 'seen' through the lens of others and such female images are largely consistent with the male authors' perceptions of national subjectivity. This chapter also investigated how Eileen Chang used vision as a way to reflect on the male perceptions of female images, as well as how she was imagined and defined as a female author in the field of literature. Chapter five is the conclusion, which highlights the significance of visual expression in Liu Na'ou's, Mu Shiying's and Eileen Chang's fictions.