| Due to huge developing of modern cities in china, metropolitan literature that isthe literature type of describing metropolis have been developing very rapidly in thehistory of modern Chinese literature. Also metropolitan literature has been a brightscene in Chinese literature of the20thcentury. Based on the important research ofcities’ space, the content in paper mainly introduces modern literature’s work amongmetropolitan literature’s novels during1930to1940. We study and analyze left-wing,new-sensation, Beijing, Kuomintang-governed and enemy-occupied area literature’smetropolitan space, and discuss different groups of writers’ various of descriptionsabout metropolitan space. The main reason that the writers have different descriptionsof metropolitan space is that discourse stand, literary taste, gender differences andideology are very different among the writers. The paper also compares different typesof literature based on metropolitan description so as to speculate different groups ofwriters’ cultural attitudes and creation standpoint, also reveal the people’s the state oflives and value selection, and analyze the complex relation among metropolitanpeople.The cities in china is developing quickly in the cultural environment of westernhalf colonization. The cities cannot exist in china, if they leave native soil. It is notcorrect that the metropolis is equal to modern civilization and native soil is equal to thetraditional culture. It is too simple if we think that metropolis is opposed to the village.On the contrary, metropolis is a set of modern and traditional culture. The metropolisowns special cultural characters that include metropolitan anonymity and inclusive,because the metropolis was invaded by other countries. Compared to culturalacquaintance society, these cultural characters have obvious differences. In terms of these characters, the metropolitan space has a significant interest and value. Comparedto the village, the metropolis is very different among privacy space and public space,collective space and social space, cultural space and belief space. These conversion ofspace provide the people with large of entertainment and cultural activity. Hence, themetropolis is more opening than the village, which provide the writers with wide thenarrated object and describing content.Based on the effect of ideology, left-wing writers such as Mao dun, Jiang kuangci,and Zhang tianyi, who are the earliest people that write metropolis, describes a grandpanoramic view. The writers achieve deep effect between the metropolis and thevillage, and write this kind of difference into the novel. From their articles, it is simpleto know that the writers have complex emotions for the metropolis and the village.Meanwhile, they are deeply influenced by Marxism literature, and set up a Marxismliterature criticism system, based on the historical materialism. They are good atdescribing the grand matters, that include the state of Shanghai society and the livingand spirit of the weak people at the bottom. Owing to the history of westerncolonization, the factories firstly come up in Shanghai, where the working class beganon the political stage, so the factories and workers become the main describingcharacter for left-wing writers. Left-wing writers described the street, mansion, thestocking trading floor, the restaurant, the factory, the slum and so on. In the terms ofthe whole metropolis view, left-wing writers paid more attention to the poor anddistressed people at the bottom. A large of people that include capitalist, urban pettybourgeois, worker, dancing girl, rickshaw-fu, cadger and various society levels ofpeople is the describing object of left-wing writers so that the reader can understandwell for Shanghai’s whole view.New sensation writers influenced by Japanese modernism literature describe themetropolis from outside space into people’s inner world, and depict the pathologicalmental states and subjective experience. New sensation writers having metropolitancharacter externally focus sensory experience of subjectivity. In their modern writings,they do not eliminate cultural content, and combine the western modernism to the traditional culture in order to reach aesthetic accomplishment. In the busy gorgeousmetropolis, the street, the skyscraper, the department store, the nightclub, the train, theelectric car, the cabin, the hospital, the dock and so on as the metropolitan space havebecome the main part of daily life and important describing content. The writers havemodeled a large of novel figures, that include businessman, bank clerk, lawyer,secretary, social butterfly, movie star and so on, and also like to speculate strangers’subtle feeling, and do well in portraying emotional changes between the opposite sex.Among these descriptions, we can see metropolitan people’s sickness life, thedecadence of the men and women and urban people inner loneliness and emptinessunder the condition of semi-colonial nature.Although Beijing-school writers live in the metropolis, they pursue the nativenatural local conditions and customs from inner heart. Lao she growing up in Beijingproduced many novels that describe Beijing metropolitan living. His “local conditionâ€writing depicts the traditional Beijing’s living that consists of conflict between modernand tradition, which is different from urban landscape and humanities culture inShanghai. Beijing is very different from Shanghai that has a relationship with foreignsettlement, because Beijing is a modern city that develops from imperial capital in thefeudal society, where people have a special emotion interests. The traditionalmetropolitan space that includes the city wall, pailou, the lane, quadrangle courtyard,mega family, restaurant and teahouse signifies new meaning. The novel fromBeijing-school has a close relationship with the village. For example, Shen chongwendescribes metropolitan repulsive phenomenon, which has a deep reflection on theurban civilization consciousness. In his description, he wanders as a rover in the streetsof Shanghai and Beijing. The metropolis is very ugly and dark compared to the writer.The professor in the university, undergraduate, soldier, urban woman in his descriptionclearly indicate that the cold evil of urban make people hypocrisy and decadent. Theprofound reflection of metropolis from Shen brings people into deeper thinking thatwhether the humanity has been alienated in the face of the convenient urbancivilization. The writers of metropolitan novel in the enemy-occupied andKuomintang-controlled areas pay more attention to urban life of the war context. Thefemale representatives such as Zhang ailing, Sun qing, Pan liudai particularly describewomen’s mental state in war. In the novels, the writers express people’s whole anxiety,a slow black atmosphere under war’s threat, and highlight that the femaleself-consciousness is awaken in the panic age. During a special historical time period,some new metropolitan spaces as describing objects have been generated, whichincludes three corners suspending on the street and air-raid shelter. Likewise, the house,the old-fashioned apartment, living room, bedroom, attic, balcony have become theimportant space for female’s house life. The career women with a sense of modernsuch as ordinary citizens, newspaper woman, lady writer, the governess are stillinsisting on their self-value of life.According to different cultural background and concerning objects, variousgroups of writers process the imagination of metropolis on the multiple dimensional.The metropolitan space selected by the writers signifies various kinds of culturalconnotation that become the medium for passing cultural information. The multipledimensional history of metropolis consist of the floating metropolitan descriptions,which provide multiple research ways with the successors. |
