A New Discussion On Gentry Images In The Late Qing Dynasty And Early Republic Of China In Modern Literature

This paper studies the gentry images in late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China in modern literature of China.The study focuses on China’s modern literature（1917-1949）,thus contemporary literature,which started from 1949,is not included.In traditional China,gentry class was closely linked with the group of scholars and had maintained for over two thousand years.However,when the modern time came,this stable class went from solidity to dissolution and disappearance.During the late Qing dynasty and early Republic of China,traditional gentry class had lost their political and cultural space,and a new type of gentry arose,who were merchant gentry and scholar gentry increasingly appearing with China’s modernization.Evil gentry took the place of the traditional gentry in the changes of regimes and became the actual administrators of rural areas.Writers were alert to those new changes,and they wrote the decadence of gentry class,which has significant meaning in China’s literary history.The destiny of gentry class was a mirror,in which the transformation of China’s cultural circles and social structure was reflected,and in which the intellectual’s attitude and mentality was revealed.In the beginning of 20^th century,a period when China was striving for self-dependence and transformation,intellectuals,including writers were disturbed by China’s reality,and they were full of inner conflict and unease.As a result,some of them criticized gentry class furiously with a modern perspective,hoping to cut the connection with old China in that gloomy time and create a new bright era,while some of them had a nostalgia for the traditional gentry-village relationship,and they recalled the old days,fictionalizing an imaginary Utopia.This paper will analyze the gentry images in modern literature and pay attention to the writer’s writing about the transformation of gentry class in modern time.Modern intellectuals,including writers,were different with traditional gentry class,but the former is nourished by the latter.They to some extent shared the same spirit.Therefore,this paper also aims to trace the spiritual link of them,in purpose of looking into the creation motive and mentality of modern intellectual and writers.The main body of this paper is three chapters.The first chapter pays attention to the deterioration and dissolution of gentry class,analyzes the writers’complex emotion in literature,and searches for the vast historical information hidden behind the literary narration.The second chapter concerns to a typical type of gentry class:squire,who lived in countryside.The key point is to find how squire was depicted in the enlightening narrative context and the revolution narrative context,and how the narration covered the truth.Chapter three is to analyze the delineation of gentry who stayed in cities.Urbanization changed the structure of gentry class,for many of them migrated from village to city,and became citizens.This chapter is to show how their mentality changed in the cultural collision caused by their migration.