Urban imagination in contemporary Chinese women's fiction since 1976 = Zhongguo xin shi qi nü xing xiao shuo zhong de cheng shi xiang xiang

Abstract

This thesis aims to examine the urban imagination in contemporary Chinese fictions created by women writers in the “New Era”, which began with the end of the Cultural Revolution in mainland China in 1976. Since then, writings on urban life and female’s literary works have been thriving in the Chinese literary community. Based on previous studies on urban imagination, my research attempts to examine in-depth and reconstruct widely the contemporary Chinese fiction written by female authors since the “New Era” through close reading of the subject matters concerned, which involves discussion from different perspectives such as geographical, sociological, cultural and feminist as well.

Chapter One reviews the literature on the definition of “Urban Image” and features my research objects, scope, methodology, and its significance.

Chapter Two, with referring to the notion of “Urban Image”, discusses how three important spaces in urban life, namely public space, private space, and consuming space, are pictured in contemporary Chinese fiction by women writers. The detailed depictions of urban image in these works form a textual basis for the city. Those female authors’ individual preferences for urban images, moreover, indicate diversified understandings towards urbanization.

Chapter Three focuses on some literary works which take a rural stand on narratives of urban life. The urban, as a whole, is characterized and shaped in contrast to the rural. It places its unique modernity in the spotlight, with rebelling against the rural tradition.

Chapter Four mainly analyses how images of individual cities are constructed in contemporary Chinese fictions. Although writers’ personal experience also contributes to the image construction, it is the urban culture which shapes the images of cities in literary texts. To be specific, the urban culture points to the regional culture determined by a city in geographic sense, its history and dominant community culture.

Chapter Five consists of four case studies of Shanghai, Wuhan, Shenzhen and Beijing, respectively. Comprehensive literary images of all the four cities in fiction by contemporary Chinese women writers since 1976 are scrutinized in this chapter, which is furthered by an examination on the factors leading to their differences.

The last chapter reviews the inherent relationship between the images of cities in Chinese fiction of the New Era by female authors and the cities in reality, and concludes with a summary of the features of the urban imagination and their significance in contemporary Chinese modernization.