Utopian Fiction in China

Genre, Print Culture and Knowledge Formation, 1902-1912
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-90-04-68038-8
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 160, 306 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 238 mm, Gewicht: 522 g

Reihe: Sinica Leidensia

Unlike previous studies that have examined the late Qing utopian imagination as an ahistorical motif, a literary theme,
and a translation phenomenon, in this book Shuk Man Leung considers utopian fiction as a knowledge apparatus that
helped develop Chinese nationalism and modernity. Based on untapped primary sources in Chinese, English, and Japanese,
her research reveals how utopian imagination, blooming after Liang Qichao’s publication of The Future of New China, served
as a tool of knowledge formation and dissemination that transformed China’s public sphere and catalysed historical change.


Embracing interdisciplinary approach from genre studies, studies on modern Chinese newspapers and intellectual history,
this book provides an analysis of the development of utopian literary practices, epistemic meanings, and fictional narratives
and the interactions between traditional and imported knowledge that helped shape the discourse in early 20th century China.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Leung, Shuk Man

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Gattungen
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturen sonstiger Sprachräume Ost- & Südostasiatische Literatur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

List of Figures

Introduction

1 Historicizing Chinese Modernity and New Fiction’s Utopian Imagination

2 New Fiction as a New Genre

3 Utopian Fiction in China

4 The Position of the Authors: Liang Qichao and His Contemporaries

5 Chapter Summaries

1 Establishment: New Fiction, Utopian Imagination, and the Generic System

1 The Order of Things: Legitimization of Fiction in the Chinese Bibliography

2 The Emergence of New Fiction and Its Generic Norms

3 The Generic Features of New Fiction: The Future of New China

4 Conclusion

2 Dissemination: the Generic Features of the Utopian Imagination

1 Generic Classification of New Fiction

2 Conclusion: the Intergeneric Element of the Utopian Imagination

3 Channels: the Political Function of Utopian Fiction and the Chinese Public Sphere

1 Utopian Fiction as a Form of Public Opinion

2 Utopia or Dystopia? China’s Partition and Revolutionary Journals

3 Utopia(s) Realized? The Constitutional Campaign and Fiction Magazines

4 Utopia beyond Constitutionalism: the Chinese Revolution of 1911 and Shanghai News

5 Conclusion

4 Origins: Liang Qichao and Chinese, Japanese, and Western Epistemology

1 The Discourse of the Future

2 The Discourse of the Nation

3 Conclusion: Utopian Temporality and Spatiality

5 Borderless Nations? Cosmopolitan Utopias with Anarchist and Socialist Faces

1 A Cosmopolitan Utopia with an Anarchist Face

2 The Third Road: Socialist Cosmopolitanism as a Moral Solution

3 Conclusion: a Moral Order for Building a Nation/Society

6 Crossing the Border: Chinese Settler Colonialism and a Borderless National Imagination

1 The Discovery of Colonization and Chinese Nationalism

2 Lü Sheng’s a Madman’s Dream: Deterritorialized China

3 Yunnan Journal and Its Utopian Novels: Transnational Autonomy

4 Conclusion

Conclusion: the Dual Community of New Fiction’s Utopian Imagination: Writing, Reading and Imagining

1 The Way “We” Imagine

2 The Way “We” Write and Read

3 The Power of Utopia: History, Imagination and Knowledge Formation

Appendix: Figures

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Shuk Man Leung, Ph.D. (2013), School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, is Assistant Professor of the
School of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong. Her works on late Qing and modern Chinese fiction, Hong Kong literature and
print culture during the cultural Cold War have appeared in journals such as Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Asian Studies
Review, Cultural Studies, Comparative Literature Studies and Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese.