James Hilton's Utopian Imagination Of China

James Hilton is an English novelist of several best-sellers at the first half of the 20 th century.In his masterpiece Lost Horizon he depicts the southwestern China in an imaginative way and creates a new word “Shangri-La”,which means an earthly paradise.This thesis is approached from the perspective of French scholar Daniel-Henri Pageaux's Imagology theory,together with internal and external analysis,to explore and evaluate Hilton's creation of the image Shangri-La.The main body of this paper contains three chapters.Chapter one focuses on Hilton's presentation of the image Shangri-La based on the close reading of the text.It consists of two parts.The first part is entitled “A community isolated from external contamination”,devoting to discussing the contrasts between Shangri-La and the outside world.The second part is entitled “A society believing in moderation”,focusing on the exploration of Shangri-La's most important philosophy,moderation.Chapter two and chapter three are the analysis and evaluation of Hilton's Shangri-La.Chapter two,after exploring one essence of Shangri-La,which is the projection of Hilton's nostalgia for the ideal passing age,puts forward that this desire demonstrates Hilton's escapism,an attempt to escape from the depressed reality.Chapter three gives an evaluation that Shangri-La manifests Hilton's activism,an intention to reform and better the reality after the analysis of the other essence of Shangri-La,which is the projection of Hilton's aspiration for an ideal society.Finally,this paper comes to a conclusion that Shangri-La is Hilton's utopian imagination of China.It is essentially the projections of his inner desires,reflecting his contractionary feelings towards the reality.A study on Hilton's depiction of Shangri-La contributes to exploring the underlying cultural values of the image-creator as well as the group and society he belongs to.