Imagining China: "Niehai Hua" as a national narrative (Zeng Pu).

详细信息   

• 作者：Zhuang ; Guo-ou.
• 学历：Doctor
• 年：2000
• 导师：Cheung, Dominic
• 毕业院校：University of Southern California
• 专业：Literature, Comparative.;Literature, Asian.;History, Asia, Australia and Oceania.
• ISBN：0493287108
• CBH：3018049
• Country：USA
• 语种：English
• FileSize：8764410
• Pages：229

文摘

Niehai Hua is an important Chinese novel written in the beginning of the twentieth century. This dissertation discusses the novel as a national narrative that testifies to the emergence of a modern form of national consciousness of the Chinese, using critical perspectives informed by postcolonial literary theory. Breaking away from a previous critical paradigm that has narrowly focused on the novel's exposition of the corruption of Chinese society in the late imperial era, this study focuses on the novel's representation of the transformation of China from a waning empire into a modern nation state.;This study situates the novel in the global cultural context of the late nineteenth century and argues that the novel offers a representation of the identity crisis of the Chinese in the modern world, in essence that it embodies the Chinese attempt to re-map a changing China. Chinese imagination of western nations in the novel is a crucial part of the construction of a new national identity. The literary representation of this reveals layers of consciousness that are overlooked by other discourses of the time. For example, the alleged love affair between the heroine of the novel Caiyun and the allied commander Alfred Von Waldersee, is interpreted as a metaphor for the complex relationship between China and the Western powers, going beyond the simple dualism of victim versus oppressor. The study also discusses the xenophobia of the Chinese represented in the novel in episodes such as the map incident. The portrayal of the daily life of Chinese scholar-officials, which has been deemed insignificant by many critics, is seen as a significant effort to hold on to a familiar cultural identity. The study also discusses how the author of Niehai Hua incorporated western narrative elements, but meanwhile preserved indigenous narrative elements in an attempt to reconcile Chinese and Western literary traditions. Criticism of the novel's literary style reflects a hegemonic dominance of western aesthetic discourses, while in fact the novel may serve as a model for Chinese writers to reconstruct a native narrative tradition.