'The Saturday': Popular narrative, identity, and cultural imaginary in literary journals of early republican Shanghai

This dissertation presents a systematic study of The Saturday (Libailiu, 1914--1916, 1921--1923) as a combination of both literary creation and cultural production in 20 th century Shanghai, by analyzing popular narrative in The Saturday, its readership, and its culture. The Saturday was one of the most successful and best-selling popular literary journals in Shanghai in the 1910's and 1920's. Released on Saturday mornings, it was China's first weekly commercial magazine, promoting reading fiction to be consumed during weekend leisure time. The Saturday provides a unique and compelling case study of the intricate process of production, dissemination, and consumption of literature, and of popular media's participation in the construction of cultural meaning. Focusing on The Saturday and the less-studied Saturday group, I attempt to demonstrate the instrumental role played by popular magazines in the configuration of urban modernity, cultural identity, and literary public sphere in early Republican Shanghai.;The popular narrative and cultural imaginary in The Saturday articulated the quest for modernization, one that emphasized sentiment, everyday experience, a middle-class way of life, economic wealth, moral and social responsibilities, strengthening of the nation, and reinvention of cultural tradition. I explore how ideas and images of modernity were integrated, moderated, and disseminated through popular print media in Republican China. In this process the Saturday group played a multi-functional role of editors, writers, publishers, translators, and readers, and served as a kind of mediator between elite intellectuals and common people, high ideals and cultural practice, and cultural producers and consumers. My reading of The Saturday stories also suggests that popular magazines and the new practice of reading and writing provided a basis to construct a cultural identity among its urban audience. Channeling the cultural expression of social values and aspirations associated with the emerging "middle society," The Saturday became a potent force in creating the consciousness and culture of the middle class.;Genres are literary "contracts" between writers and readers, a cultural form that attempted to negotiate between literary convention and creation, and between traditional and modern experience. In this dissertation, I examine the major story formulas in The Saturday, including stories treating topics of love, society, domestic issues and marriage, patriotism and war, business and work, and stock market participation. I argue that these popular fiction genres participated in the construction of cultural meaning and ideological assumptions about a new social and moral order, which in early 20th century China were closely tied up with the problem of modernity in a society in transition.;Chapter 1 attempts to understand The Saturday as a cultural phenomenon in its social and cultural context, which provides a basis for textual analysis that will appear throughout this dissertation. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 provide a close reading and textual analysis of the fictional writing that appeared in The Saturday, through which I discuss the cultural significance of popular literary formulas. In Chapters 2 and 3 I investigate "stories of sentiment" and "social stories," the most popular fiction genres during the early Republican period, both of which sought a new emotional expressivity, and centered on the tensions between traditional ethics and modern life in a society undergoing profound transformations. Chapter 4 discusses stories specifically related to middle-class life such as stock market stories and business stories, as well as The Saturday reading public, and explores how popular narrative helped to articulate a new middle-class culture and cultural identity in an urban setting.;By creating a new discourse of feelings, family, and nation, the popular narrative in The Saturday not only responded to changing Chinese society and cultural values, but also helped shape and define the new interaction between self and society, and between private and public. The Saturday culture cannot be properly understood without considering the vital role of popular media, the sociopolitical and cultural needs of the ascendant urban middle class, and the new relation between texts and readers, and between reading and writing.