The Cultural Implication Of Chinese Modern Detective Fiction

The Chinese modern detective fiction came out under the direct influence of the literary foundation of the traditional Chinese crime novels and the western translated detective novels.Compared with its reception in the first half of the 20th century,the academic study of Chinese modern detective fiction began from the late 1980s.This paper argues that as an important component of modern Chinese popular literature,the detective fiction can be analyzed in different dimensions.Not only had it witnessed the social unrest of the 20th century China,the culture collision between East and West and the Chinese urbanization,but also it reflected the traditional Chinese intellectuals' complex attitudes toward Western civilization.The cultural implication of Chinese modern detective fiction includes three aspects:Firstly,the detective figure.The Chinese readers gradually accepted the western detective novels by shifting their reading focus from upright officials to the detective figures.Specifically,the Chinese detectives in the fiction,who were nourished by the Confucian culture and urban culture,inherited the skills of the Western counterparts;Secondly,the city image.This paper discusses the city image(mainly Shanghai)of the detective fiction from three perspectives:the order and interpersonal relationships of the city,urban space and private traces,city image and cultural construction.With the exploration of city images,the paper tends to suggest that the cultural construction of cities had been a complicated process;Thirdly,value appeals.It is mainly embodied in the integration of morality and law,the scientific discourse of the enlightenment and the desire writing as the exhortation.The value of the Chinese modern detective fiction has been veiled for years.Nowadays,when we uncover the relations among mass culture,popular literature and the elite literature,and how they interact with modern literary production mechanism,we will once again find the trajectory,value and revelation of Chinese modern detective fiction.