The lyrical and the crisis of modern Chinese selfhood in modern Chinese literature, 1919--1949.

摘要

This work considers the fate of "self" in modern Chinese literature in the first half of the twentieth century. It aims to explore the various aesthetic approaches by which the image of selfhood has been constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed. It also examines the relationships, either explicit or implicit, between such aesthetic practices and their historical backgrounds. I want to answer the following questions: What is the implication of "self" in modern Chinese context? How do the changes of social milieu and ideological context affect the meaning of "self"? In what ways are the different understandings of selfhood reflected in literature and art, and how do these aesthetic practices contribute to the configuration of modern Chinese subjectivity? How do we interpret the interplay between the aesthetic and the political around the issue of selfhood in modern China? How does that interplay illuminate on the cultural dilemma and spiritual crisis that Chinese people are forced to be faced with in the process of China's modernization, as well as the solutions they have experimented with? The dissertation mainly takes a thematic approach and the texts I examine cut cross a spectrum of conventional genres and established historical periods in literary history. Among others, the texts explored include Lu Xun's stories and prose poems; lyrical poems of Ai Qing, Mu Dan and some other minor poets; novels and stories by Fei Ming and Shi Zhecun. It also involves western texts for comparison, such as poetry of Baudelaire and other French Symbolists, novels of Anglo-American modernists, and poetic as well as critical works of Whitman, T. S. Eliot, and Auden.