Jun Lei
- Published in print:
- 2022
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9789888528745
- eISBN:
- 9789888754540
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888528745.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
This chapter focuses on the New Sensationalist school of writers Liu Na’ou and Mu Shiying whose worked gained popularity in Shanghai in the turbulent era of the late 1920s to the mid-1930s. It ...
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This chapter focuses on the New Sensationalist school of writers Liu Na’ou and Mu Shiying whose worked gained popularity in Shanghai in the turbulent era of the late 1920s to the mid-1930s. It analyzes how race, class, and gender intersected within the cosmopolis where Chinese male authors became part of what was then considered middleclass urban professionals. The neo-sensationalists took issues with tension of urban life as middlebrow men experienced it, specifically in terms of the emasculation complex elicited by both an unfulfilled desire for the Modern Girl and the oppressive racial and class hierarchies of the semi-colonial city. The textual tactic of “surrogate violence” allows the authors to confront the inner conflict about violent means to achieve masculinity: he can simultaneously engage with a fantasy of violence and its sensations through the surrogate on the one hand, and with the judgement and disparagement of it, on the other.Less
This chapter focuses on the New Sensationalist school of writers Liu Na’ou and Mu Shiying whose worked gained popularity in Shanghai in the turbulent era of the late 1920s to the mid-1930s. It analyzes how race, class, and gender intersected within the cosmopolis where Chinese male authors became part of what was then considered middleclass urban professionals. The neo-sensationalists took issues with tension of urban life as middlebrow men experienced it, specifically in terms of the emasculation complex elicited by both an unfulfilled desire for the Modern Girl and the oppressive racial and class hierarchies of the semi-colonial city. The textual tactic of “surrogate violence” allows the authors to confront the inner conflict about violent means to achieve masculinity: he can simultaneously engage with a fantasy of violence and its sensations through the surrogate on the one hand, and with the judgement and disparagement of it, on the other.
Christopher Rosenmeier
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748696369
- eISBN:
- 9781474434805
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748696369.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter focuses on the 1930s New Sensationist (xinganjuepai) writers Shi Zhecun and Mu Shiying, whose works are shown in later chapters to have influenced the subsequent literary scene. They are ...
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This chapter focuses on the 1930s New Sensationist (xinganjuepai) writers Shi Zhecun and Mu Shiying, whose works are shown in later chapters to have influenced the subsequent literary scene. They are seen here as an avant-garde group that wrote works in opposition to the overall direction of the contemporary literary field. Through close analysis of a number of short stories, the chapter demonstrates how these authors constructed hybrid works that incorporated tropes and stereotypes from popular literature, legend, tradition, literature and myth. By combining the real with the otherworldly and the imagined, these authors rejected realism and the politicisation of literature promoted at the time by the League of Left-wing Writers. The chapter also establishes aspects of these writers’ works that are used for later comparison.Less
This chapter focuses on the 1930s New Sensationist (xinganjuepai) writers Shi Zhecun and Mu Shiying, whose works are shown in later chapters to have influenced the subsequent literary scene. They are seen here as an avant-garde group that wrote works in opposition to the overall direction of the contemporary literary field. Through close analysis of a number of short stories, the chapter demonstrates how these authors constructed hybrid works that incorporated tropes and stereotypes from popular literature, legend, tradition, literature and myth. By combining the real with the otherworldly and the imagined, these authors rejected realism and the politicisation of literature promoted at the time by the League of Left-wing Writers. The chapter also establishes aspects of these writers’ works that are used for later comparison.
Christopher Rosenmeier
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748696369
- eISBN:
- 9781474434805
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748696369.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Xu Xu and Wumingshi were among the most widely read authors in China during and after the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). Despite being an integral part of the Chinese literary scene, their ...
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Xu Xu and Wumingshi were among the most widely read authors in China during and after the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). Despite being an integral part of the Chinese literary scene, their bestselling fiction has, however, been given scant attention in histories of Chinese writing. This book is the first extensive study of Xu Xu and Wumingshi in English or any other Western language and it re-establishes their importance within the popular Chinese literature of the 1940s. Their romantic novels and short stories were often set abroad and featured a wide range of stereotypes, from pirates, spies and patriotic soldiers to ghosts, spirits and exotic women who confounded the mostly cosmopolitan male protagonists. Christopher Rosenmeier’s detailed analysis of these popular novels and short stories shows that such romances broke new ground by incorporating and adapting narrative techniques and themes from the Shanghai modernist writers of the 1930s, notably Shi Zhecun and Mu Shiying. The study thereby contests the view that modernism had little lasting impact on Chinese fiction, and it demonstrates that the popular literature of the 1940s was more innovative than usually imagined, with authors, such as those studied here, successfully crossing the boundaries between the popular and the elite, as well as between romanticism and modernism, in their bestselling works.Less
Xu Xu and Wumingshi were among the most widely read authors in China during and after the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). Despite being an integral part of the Chinese literary scene, their bestselling fiction has, however, been given scant attention in histories of Chinese writing. This book is the first extensive study of Xu Xu and Wumingshi in English or any other Western language and it re-establishes their importance within the popular Chinese literature of the 1940s. Their romantic novels and short stories were often set abroad and featured a wide range of stereotypes, from pirates, spies and patriotic soldiers to ghosts, spirits and exotic women who confounded the mostly cosmopolitan male protagonists. Christopher Rosenmeier’s detailed analysis of these popular novels and short stories shows that such romances broke new ground by incorporating and adapting narrative techniques and themes from the Shanghai modernist writers of the 1930s, notably Shi Zhecun and Mu Shiying. The study thereby contests the view that modernism had little lasting impact on Chinese fiction, and it demonstrates that the popular literature of the 1940s was more innovative than usually imagined, with authors, such as those studied here, successfully crossing the boundaries between the popular and the elite, as well as between romanticism and modernism, in their bestselling works.
