Male Imagination: The Space Of Shanghai In Novels

In the end of 20^th century, there was a clear "spatial turn" in the western academics. Henri Lefebvre and Michel Foucault are the representatives of space theory. Their revaluation of space had corrected the modern Space and Time, pointed out out the importance of space, stressed the complex contact between power and space. Mike ? Crang discussed the significance of literature geographical landscape in special chapter of Cultural Geography and provided a new method, space theory, to interpret the literature works. However, China's academic are still in translation and preliminary application stage on this theory which they applied in special study with national conditions. In fact, all along, China's literary history and literary criticism mention little about the decription of space in novels, their presence was often seen as accessories of figures and story. Particularly the urban novels of the 1930s concern so much space in Shanghai, but the researchers also focus on the modern of city and the relationship between people and city. Therefore, we hope that we can use space theory to analysis the male writers's Shanghai writings in the two period, one of which is 17 years after 1949 and the other is after reform and opening-up, inquiring about the significance behind of decription of space, revealing how Shanghai city was constuctured in the novels, that is,how male writers imagined Shanghai and showed it in the narrative text.This paper has six parts. The first one, the logical strating point for the entire thesis, introduces the development and evolution of space theory, focusing on Lefebvre and Foucault's point of view. At the same time, it makes a simple carding to the translation and dissemination of theory in China. Then immediately this paper takes the urban landscape of Shanghai as an example to discuss the relationship between space and literary criticism, the gender implication of male imagination of space.The second part begins in literary criticism of Shanghai's space. The "center-edge" theory is used to re-read the geographical landscape in novels about Shanghai in 1950s and 1960s. This part makes case study on male imagination of space of Shanghai in revolution's context and finds that spatial pattern of the semicolonial period was retained by the new regime and deeply affected the space in the text.The third part makes re-reading to the geographical landscape in novels about Shanghai from the 1980s and 1990s to the early 21^st century. It makes case study on male imagination of space of Shanghai after the reform and opening-up and finds that literary texts have a deep reflection to space which is becoming multi-complex.On the basis of the above, the fourth part analogs the description of space of Shanghai in two periods, then finds that the different stages of space imagination have in common, that is, the Shanghai in their eyes is feminization with mainstream ideology.The fifth part compares the different writers' decription of space of Shanghai and finds that their life experiences, interesting of different sectors, knowledge and the consciousness of construction of identity etc. lead to the differences of space imagination which show us that Shanghai in their imagination is a colorful and personalized world.The sixth part explains why this paper chooses the male perspective and finds that it's different from female one. On the one hand, due to conscientious subordinate to the mainstream ideology, male perspective was suppressed. On the other hand, the process that they established Shanghai in novels is also the one that they created Shanghai in text as a woman. Lastly, this paper expresses the expection to the imagination of space of Shanghai in the future.