Study On Occidental Travel Notes In Late Qing Dynasty

In the late times of the Qing Dynasty , the defeat of the Qing government in the opium war compelled many scholar-bureaucrats exploring earnestly a bright future for the nation and people .Under this circumstance , a trend of thought, that is , "literary works should serve the need of society", emerged in the field of literature . Travel notes , as an important literary style , tended to emphasize its role on the running of the country . Meanwhile , frequent communication with foreign nations broadened the eyereach of those writers on travel notes , and thus stimulated them to pay more attention to many places outside the country . In this case , numerous travel notes which described and presented foreign landscapes and cultural systems , were created at that time. Different from some former styles of travel notes , the new kind was characteristics of large quantity and novel themes , as well as new styles and expression techniques, so formed a unique kind of travel notes ?travel notes on foreign places in late Qing Dynasty .For some unknown reason , such kind of travel notes has long been ignored and nearly no study has been made on it. Hence, I have made some primary reseach and analysis on it. Since that kind of travel notes features large number and various themes, I would like to make detailed study on Occidental travel notes which are typical and systematical.This thesis is divided into three parts:Firstly , from the angle of social background , the thesis explores the causes of the creation of the travel notes on foreign places in late Qing Dynasty, and then analyses the influence of the trend of literary thoughts at that time on the styles and content of that kind of travel notes.Secondly , the thesis introduces life experiences and ideological conditions of some primary writers , and then states the main content and literary characters of some important works.Finally, the thesis makes a detailed analysis on the literary value of Occidental travel notes in late Qing Dynasty . Respectively , it elaborates the influence of the travel notes mentioned above on the culture and poetry revolution , as well as travel notes on foreign places in the modern times .