| This paper means to investigate the modernity in Wang Anyi and Kim Seung-ok’s novels.The reason for the attention of the urban space in Shanghai and Seoul is that the city is important factor of reflection for experiences of modernity."Modernity" is the independent and special form of the social life which provides the characteristics of modern society, and aggregate of system, culture and philosophy being associated with the industrialization. The city is the product of the modernization, and the modern culture is namely the urban culture. When we talk about Baudelaire or Balzac, apparently we are unable to leave from the city Paris, the capital of nineteenth Century. In this city, libertines, prostitutes, mass nameless, an array of goods in arcade and etc., these all shapes the city’s special scenery. It’s perhaps the religious intoxication of metropolis called by Baudelaire that makes him not only be dazzled but also filled with emotion, and all sorts of modernity experience will be awakened in this special state of experience for the city, then sublimed into numerous literary images.Therefore, modernity should be some kind of coagulation for urban experience. Or it can be said that when we talk about modernity we should do it from the city. Moreover, the city is not a ordinary small town, but a modern metropolis. Only such a city can bring a new space-time experience. This experience was firstly captured by sensitive writers who then began to shape their eyesight of observing upon things and perspective of thinking which will eventually embody a kind of their poetics and value system.Shanghai is the city that earliest accepted Western modernity and recovered the strength of the international metropolis at a great rate since the reform and opening up. Shanghai was early recognized as one of the world’s five largest city of international metropolis in the last century. Although later it experienced a period of quiet, with the development of the Pudong area in the 90’s, became the most flourishing city in China. Shanghai reflects a long developing historical procession of Chinese contemporary and modern society more than one century including the impact of the Western powers, semi colonization, the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, the socialist revolution and cultural revolution, economic rapid development since the reform and opening up and etc..Therefore Shanghai naturally becomes the core space for understanding China’s modernization and its characteristics. Like Shanghai, Seoul has experienced the whole Korean social unrest and change of the twentieth Century. From the beginning of the 1930s, Seoul gradually transformed into modern city in the urban development policy of the Japanese imperialism, and in the 1960s under the stimulation of economic development policy led by government acheived the rapid economic development, eventually created a "miracle on the Han River".Wang Anyi has been hailed as "the heir of Shanghai style literature" and has attracted a lot of attention,having a lot works mainly with Shanghai as their background that refects the urbanized phenomenon in Shanghai. Kim Seung-ok’s 1960’s novels are characterized by the pursuit of individual will and the reflection of civil society, and show that it is different from the characteristics of the 1950’s, which make him a representative writer of the 60’s Korean literature. Wang Anyi who described Shanghai as decadent, hedonism, modern metropolis is different from the traditional Shanghai style writers represented by Mu Shiying, Her novels resemble the Chinese traditional stories, she focused on the lives of urban immigrants entering into Shanghai with the process of urbanization and the old Shanghai style and folk traditional culture passing away in the history of Shanghai. Wang Anyi reproduced the features and life of the past times in the novel. Kim Seung-ok embodied Seoul which is the most core of economic modernization process centered by development since the 1960’s in the South Korea as the most figurative space in his works. The author makes use of Seoul being with specific space and place to imagine and symbolize the contradictions caused by the modern city of capitalism,and this is the important starting point for this paper’s study.Wang Anyi makes the "alley", "boudoir", "gossip", "Zhabei" and or so as her narrative angle for shanghai’s urban space. Shanghai alley variously embodies the history of Shanghai. The alley has got it’s own delicacy, elegance, softness, and almost daily sense of intimacy and sexuality, including the Shanghai’s past "style". The elegant and decent heroine in the Song of Everlasting Sorrow lead his life in this space. "Boudoir" is a private space belonging to Shanghai’s middle class females, which is a combined "Creole" space of traditional and modern culture. One can catch a glimpse upon Shanghai’s fusion of modernity made by the 1940s’ young women through the boudoir. Wang Anyi does not immensely demonstrate the modernity in the civil social field through the boudoir, but can do the experience reflected and felt in the private space and everyday life. The Zhabei and the Putuo region in the "Fu Ping" is the marginal area in Shanghai, where the migrants inhabit here from the countryside. Although the time has gone by for 60 years since the background of the works, Putuo is still a developing area in this region.The writer describes the historically marginalized people and space through works and makes the mass memory and folklore hidden by the mainstream culture narrative in the process of urbanization as a symbol combining them to the memory of daily life and vast cultural field.The representative metropolitan space in Kim Seung-ok’s novels can be summarized as "boarding house", "street", "slum", etc.. The street in Kim Seung-ok’s novels appears as the critical modern consciousness, which is opposed to the post war’s literature. The subjective desire presented by the Seoul space wants to integrate into the modern order in Kim Seung-ok’s novels, and to seek the stability in the center of the city, and have the desire of pursuing the modern value of discipline, order and so on. In the 1960’s, there were so many outsiders in Seoul that the boarding house often appeared in the literary works during that period. And Seung-ok’s novel "lux" and "the confirmation of the fifteen fixed ideas "is the best works for reaction of the peoples’feeling lodging in the boarding house. As the background of the novel, Seoul is not only a good space for emboding the contradiction and problem of the economic development and the modernization process dominated by the state but also a desirous and fantasic space of the local college students and outsiders living in Seoul where intensively reflected the process of urbanization and industrialization. It embodies the pain and happiness, sadness and happiness of this kind of person, and it is the space that carries all peoples’feeling.Seemingly the female in Wang Anyi and Seung-ok’s novels is dominated by men. The sexual desire of men will turn the sex of women into valuable goods in the process of urbanization and industrialization. The relationship between "Wang Qiyao"and the director Li in the Everlasting Regret is just like this. The market principle of capitalism replaces the traditional family ethics and the female becomes consumer goods. Her youth and beautifulness are replaced for the rings and Alice apartment and other materials owned by the director Li. This desire of women is a modern one gradually developed in the new order of commercial city. In the Seung-ok’s works, "aekyung", "Julie" in the "the style of 60s"and wife in the "Seoul moonlight 0 chapter"are very familiar with exchange value of the city which will be made full use of by these characters. Although the elder sister in the "goat’s strength"originally started this exchange passively, naturally accepted the results. It can be said that this phenomenon in the 1960’s Seoul is also very common.But the female gradually have a new understanding for male proprietary areas in the process of chasing material desire. After experienced a escape by chance,The heroine "Hyun Joo"in the "Night"started to have new desires for sex, which whereas is not a degrading process but one to save themselves.Finally, the reflective characteristics for the modernity reflected in Wang Anyi’s and Seung-ok’s novels will be investigated. Wang Anyi’s reflection for the modernity shows one for economic and political modernity. Wang Anyi’s nostalgia is elegance with plump posture of old Shanghai. The rapid development of Shanghai economy is towards the vulgar direction since the reform and opening up, which results in the loss of exquisite, elegant life quality and atmosphere. She describes the exclusivity of Shanghai with sharp strokes in the "Grieve land". The reflection of Political Modernity:Wang Anyi’s "Everlasting Regret",on the eve of New China’s establish, she moved the background of the work from Shanghai to Wu Bridge, in order to keep a certain distance with the mainstream discourse of the socialist revolution’s victory. After returning to Shanghai, the main space is limited to the heroine’s house and its periphery, in order to to keep distance with the social environment.Wang Anyi who reflects historical consciousness is different from scar literature and reflective literature writers. Wang Anyi’s narration of the Cultural Revolution in the "Everlasting Regret" accounted for only a small part, on the contrary, which sharply pointed out the social problems since the reform and opening up in order to reflect upon the mainstream ideology and mainstream discourse. The reflective nature of Seung-ok’s novels demonstrates the reflection of the group of people and the mode of thinking in the wave of industrialization in the 60’s. Describing the representatives of bourgeois modernity being on behalf of Pragmatism and disgust for the class standard of middle class, and ones to express aversion for modernity through the rebel, self-imposed exile means, Seung-ok vividly depicts the collision between the positive factor of modernity and the one of self-confrontation so as to realize the reflection for the modernity. |
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