| "Biography of the Social Butterfly in Shanghai" was written by Han Bangqing. This novel was initially published in installments on the "remarkable book of Shanghai" which began to be printed in feb. 1892.(First a publication appearing once every 10 days, then every month.)Two chapters each issue, ending with the 30th chapters. Then it was concentrated into a book, which was published with 64 chapters as a lithographic printing in 1894. This novel, with the clue of the degradation of the two brother and sister Zhao Puzhai and Zhao Erbao in Shanghai, describes the love without marriage between approaching 30 prostitutes and their brother frequenters, reappearing the living condition of the prostitutes in Shanghai at that time. The body of this thesis is divided into 3 parts, analyzing how the novel inherits and brings forth new idea to the tradition from many aspects like the structure of narration, the portrayal of figure, the orientation of appreciation and the influence to the contemporary novel of Shanghai School.The first part is how this novel inherits and brings forth new ideas to the "remarkable book style". Although the writer followed the essence of the six remarkable books on his own initiative, instead of sticking to convention, he got his own artistic skill from the distinguishing features of the original relation between the structure of narration which used "crossing , insertion, hiding and doddery" and the skills which were used in the remarkable book style frequently like "the transverse cloud cutting the mountain" "the horizontal bridge locking the brook" "understatement instead of overstatement" and "foreshadowing". Also, there is the other evidence which were considered to be the elaboration to the "reason" theory of Zhang Zhupo in the portrayal of figure like "no duplication", "no contradiction", and "no thinking of one thing and leaving out another".The second part of the thesis is the modern new characteristic of the novel. The culture atmosphere of Shanghai in modern times has the characteristics of being combination of Chinese and West, commercialized and an entertainment for the masses. This kind of broad and free culture atmosphere plusing the writer's own special orientation of appreciation gave birth to the modern new characteristics of the novel, those are, the tendency which was different from the traditional prostitute novels but like the realistic literature of "the May 4th movement in 1919"; the conception of thecity residents which appeared in the simple description and broke the convention of old Chinese romantic novel; the reduction of the powers which belong to the storytelling man and abrupt open ending; the unique language style which was given by Subai dialect in the conversation.The third part is the influence to the novels of the modern Shanghai School. This novel, the masterpiece of the Old Shanghai School, has the profound influence to the modern Shanghai School, especially in the 1940s. When the culture of the masses people in big cities come into being .Zhang Ailing, who was a top-notch player of Shanghai School, had a strong affection to this novel. She had a sympathetic response with Han Pangqing for many times. It is in the inheritance and transcendence of this novel that Zhang Ailing' work was endowed by two characteristics "modernization" and "Chinese".We can know from the analysis that the elaborate structure of narration and the skillful depiction of characters in "Biography of the Social Butterfly in Shanghai" reveal that the writer revered and learned consciously the trandition of Chinese novels. While the deep-going experience of humanism , the applause for temporal aesthetics and the simple description express the endeavor to break the trandition and convert to modernity. Just the sympathetic unification of the above two aspects enables the novel to appear the characteristic of tansition from ancientry to modernity which is the particularity of modern literature. |
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