Wanxiang Popular Novel Research

Literature periodical played a key role in literature production in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. Under the control of Wang puppet ideology and literature and art policy, the voice of anti-Japan and nation salvation was vanished temporarily. Meanwhile, popular literature yielded unusually brilliant results. This article focuses on Wanxiang, a comprehensive literary journal born in Shanghai Isolated island period and thrived during Japanese-occupied period. Through the study of its most outstanding popular novels, this article approaches, analyzes and studies the complication of literature production in Japanese-occupied area and the unique experience of popular literature development during this period.This article includes preface, main body and conclusion. The preface briefly summaries the current Situation of Wanxiang studing and the thoughts and meaning of this article writing. The first chapter gradually approaches the popular novels of Wanxiang and emphasizes on the popular novels'situation in modern literature: first of all, it introduces the phases of popular novels'development in modern times, trying to find the reason of popular novels'prosperity in Japanese-occupied period. And then it states Wanxiang's edit strategy of creating New literature and the Movement of Popular Literature which speaks for popular literature. The second chapter narrates the forming of Wanxiang popular novel center. The writer scans the group of Wanxiang popular novel authors and analyzes important individual authors and rising stars of Dong Wu Group. The author then, starting with diversified subjects and complicated reality topic, summaries the popular novel writing's spirituality. Therefore, Wanxiang simply gains its leading position from a newly rising star of Shanghai literary world in three months. The following is the main part of the thesis. The third chapter discusses Wanxiang popular novels'structure characteristics. This chapter includes four sections. The first section introduces that both the poswar change of culture in Shanghai and the writers'diversified consciousnesses of creation forms the aesthetic of the popular novels of Wanxiang. The second section studies Liaohong Sun, one of the representative authors of popular novels in Wanxiang and discussed the sinicized narrative characteristics based on Liaohong Sun's Xia Dao Ping Lu. The third section: the popular novel in Wanxiang is a mirror of Shanghai life in Japanese-occupied area. Among which New Stories and Li Amao gaiden are the closest to Shanghai citizens'life. They adopt the cynical narrative device, highlighting the creation characteristics and literary value of themselves through profound irony. These two novels show the authors'great care for reality, gracing many for popular literature. The fourth section: popular novels gradually became elegant in 1940s which shall give great credit to generations of Wanxiang writers. They contributed a great deal especially in social romantic novels. The author finds the urbanization context of popular literature through rouge tears by Henshui Zhang, Nurse Song and The Shadow of The Golden Phoenix by Yu Qie, The Evening Tide of Yangtze River by Di Ding and the performance of Ailing Zhang and female writers of Dong Wu group.The last part is the conclusion of the thesis, restating the overall characteristics of the popular novels in Wanxiang. Speaking from the aspect of its performance, the popular novel was pushed to a new high in Shanghai literary world in 1940s under the lead of Wanxiang, which formed a strong force with popular publications like The Violet and chun qiu. Speaking from the aspect of self development, popular novels was improved further through Wanxiang and finally became mature in the light of new literature and through the urbanization of itself, making itself the most abundant literature in Japanese-occupied area.