Politics and the novel: A study of Liang Ch'i-ch'ao's 'The Future of New China' and his views on fiction.

摘要

This dissertation attempts to delineate the relationship between politics and the novel in the late-Ch'ing period through Liang Ch'i-ch'ao's (1873-1929) views on fiction and his novel, The Future of New China. Liang's advocating the "new fiction," the "political fiction," and his founding of New Fiction, China's first fiction magazine, along with his championing fiction as "the supreme literary form," have created an overwhelming blooming of fiction writing and criticism. We cannot attribute all the accomplishments of fiction in this period to Liang alone, but his role in opening up a variety of possibilities for modern Chinese fiction to develop is pivotal.; In this dissertation, I first elaborate on the methodology and perspective adopted. Then, Liang's general literary thought is highlighted, with a view to seeing where Liang stands in Chinese literary tradition. In the next chapter, I trace the development of Liang's views on fiction from 1896 to 1915, with the emphasis on several of Liang's key concepts such as "revolution in fiction," the "political novel," "realistic and idealistic fiction," and "four powers of fiction"--the powers of fiction to perfume (hsun X), to soak (chin X), to stimulate (tz'u X) and to elevate (t'i X). The overall purpose is to see how Liang's views of fiction sum up traditional moralism in fiction and blend it with the current socio-political concern to open up a new trend that critics come to term the "moral burden of modern Chinese fiction."; Liang Ch'i-ch'ao's novel, The Future of New China, is where he put his views on fiction into practice. This novel might have been inspired by Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, 2000-1887 and other Japanese political novels prevalent at the time when Liang was in exile in Japan. Examining it carefully, however, we will have to acknowledge that besides the possible influences, Liang is by and large writing within the Chinese narrative tradition, yet incorporating political discourse and concerns into this tradition. His novel can therefore be called an "idealistic political novel." This fact confirms our contention that Liang as a transitional figure, on the one hand, strove for a new medium to carry the consciousness of a new age but, on the other hand, could not easily get away from the grip of the tradition in which he was deeply rooted.; In the next chapter, "Ideology and Genre," Liang's views on fiction are seen along with critical discourse of other conscientious intellectuals to suggest that late-Ch'ing intellectuals can be described as participating in a "social mission" to use the literary imagination and medium as an instrument to change society.; In the final analysis, as a transitional intellectual figure, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao not only is in control of the public opinion but also exerts an influence on the development of literature. His "revolution" in prose, poetry, and fiction, if not precisely "revolutionary" as we see them today, did, however, bring late-Ch'ing intellectuals to rethink what literature in general, and fiction in particular, could do, and pave the way for further development in the May Fourth and later fictional writings. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)