博士 / 輔仁大學 / 比較文學研究所 / 92 / Abstract
Published right before the outbreak of Sino-Japanese War in 1895, Sing Song Girls of Shanghai has the unique historical context of bordering between the twilight zone of the old and the new and thus is fated to be one of those “double-lost” works (neither do they completely belong to the “old” novels nor are they “new” novels yet) in literary/cultural history. By analyzing the phenomena which Sing Song Girls of Shanghai has aroused in cultural history for the 120 years since it was first published, the writer of this dissertation aims to reflect on some cultural issues: the images of the city through centuries, media, sexuality and genres, etc. in order to, on the one hand, reveal these long-neglected cultural issues deliberately obscured because of the restrictions caused by their “disputability” or “political correctness,” and, on the other hand, depict the hidden true spirit of the late-Qing Shanghai-style Urban Fiction to show its significance of being “the pioneering voice of modernity“ in late-Qing literary circle.
The first part of the dissertation deals with the reconstructing of the historical context of “the cultural circle” of the modern Shanghai City thirty years before the 1895 Sino-Japanese War---the development of Shanghai toward a modern cosmopolitan city since the Opium War, the social aspects concerning the dialogues between the Westernization Movement and responses toward western thinking , the way Li Hung-chang’s “Shanghai Mufu of Foreign Affairs” reveals the changes of mentality of late-Qing Confucians, and how newspapers and magazines prompted the emergence of the first newspapermen in the modern sense and the literature of city dwellers. This part is aimed to present the cultural issues of the transitional period between the old and the new generation and make further analyses based on them：the impacts of the first wave of modern thinking in the late-Qing period made Shanghai a modern cosmopolitan city and prompted the full bloom of Shanghai’s newspaper and magazine industry and thus provided a chance of cultural transformation for late-Qing novelists----the Gifted in the cosmopolitan Shanghai, who were right in the transitional period of the old and the new.
Dealing with the aspects of life history and culture, we can get closer to Han Pan-ch’ing’s inner world when he published the literary periodical. In the second part of the dissertation, besides analyzing a dozen serial classical-language novels printed in Shanghai Literary BiWeekly, the writer will further elaborate on how these novelists dedicate to the discovery of the female culture in both classical-language novels and daily-language novels. Through both synchronic and diachronic analyses, we will easily find out that the birth of this periodical in the Shanghai literary circle symbolizes the Shanghai heritage of the amorous novels since the Late Ming period on the one hand and explains how the romance tradition of the courtesan novels goes through disruption and rebirth here on the other hand.
The third part of the dissertation directly uses this courtesan novel, which clearly records the cultural imprint of the first wave of Chinese modernization, i.e., the first step of moving toward the “modern Shanghai” in modern literature, as a coordinate to observe the urban culture of the Shanghai-style literature: how the cultural values of the traditional elite class were gradually replaced by the uprising commercial values and how the increasing differences between the city and the country resulted in migratory population, which made impact on the traditional social order and in turn helped generate another form of cultural ecology. Chapters Four and Five focus on analyzing： how the images of the city or the female body, as are presented in the Shanghai “Exterritorial” novels, have injected brand new elements and variables to the traditional novels, making them become the preceding paragons of Han Pan-ch’ing’s Urban writing；how the issues of the modern city space and the female self-realizations in these novels have concretized the material aspect of modernization； and also how the modern signs and novelty of the changes of female positions have both made new narrative devices possible and completed the changes and variations of the conventions of erotic novels.
Next, continuing with the discussion of the contour of the “exterior” landscape of the city and its map of desires, we find the overwhelming material environment of the modern Shanghai and the colorful stage-like public spaces reflect the inner world and self-reflection of the characters in the novels as well. Due to the fact that the novelist employs the narrative strategy of revealing the traces of desires and clearly present the imprint of fighting “foreign experiences” in the process of “self-modeling,” the novel shows how the subject of modernity has suffered loss of directions because of the chaos and breakdown of traditional values in the unpleasant experiences of materialism and commercialism in the city；and on the other hand, the novel also clearly reveals the upward surges of the society and classes which reshuffle the traditional ideas of the dignitary and the lowly and the unshakable class status of the past, resulting in a brand new structure of interactions for subject/object and the material world/the individual. The novel indeed demonstrates the most obvious attributes of the emerging Shanghai-style culture.
From the issues shown in the novel as are stated above, we are made to “re-evaluate” Han Pan-ch’ing as a writer: Han Pan-ch’ing is not only the first novelist with a professional awareness in modern China, his Sing-Song Girls of Shanghai is also the first serial novel in vernacular Chinese in the late-Qing period；more importantly, this novel is the first great work in Shanghai dialect which presents the beginning city landscape of Shanghai, concretely reflecting a urban world with all various forces compressed and melted together---the novel can even be ranked as one of the most important works among the late-Qing Shanghai-style Urban novels for this. Viewing Han Pan-ch’ing’s Sing-Song Girls of Shanghai from these meaning-generating angles, we can not only challenge the traditional criticisms of late-Qing literature, but also re-explore the origins of modernity in modern urban literature from brand-new perspectives.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TW/092FJU00617003 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | Liu, Wen-Tsuei, 呂文翠 |
| Contributors | Liu, Chi-Hui, Chen, Ping-Yuan, 劉紀蕙, 陳平原 |
| Source Sets | National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations in Taiwan |
| Language | zh-TW |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Format | 338 |
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