"Shanghai Ghost Stories" In 1930s

In 1930s' Shanghai, there were a special "ghost-imaginary" text series - "Lun Yu · Ghost Stories Special Edition" and several Shanghai metropolis writers' ghost novels. This thesis attempts to discover the relationship between "the ghosts" inside the texts and the metropolis environment outside the texts, and the dialectics between the "dispelling the ghosts" and "reverting to the ghosts" in the modern literature evolution process. "The metropolis"—the modernized and commercialized linguistic environment has brought the "ghost stories" many heterogeneous factors. The latter one was inevitably "produced" to be "modern ghost stories"; while the irrational and unreal "ghost stories" gave "the metropolis" an absurd face, which could be a unique angle to imagine and feel it.The analysis about "Lun Yu * Ghost Stories Special Edition" is focused on the inseparable relationship between this edition and the modern media. This typical modernized way of producing the "ghost stories" had great influence on the form of the texts, and the apparent or unapparent reflection to the metropolis consuming culture. Through the "models" of the ghosts, some "modern elements" and "gaps" in the texts in this special edition, we may see, in the angle of the contents and the forms, that there were some subtle changes in the "ghost stories" which were produced in the modernized way.Three metropolis writers— Shi Zhecun, Mu Shiying and Xu Xu, wrote the "ghost stories" in the same period, and they also took the "female ghosts" as the objects. This may be regarded as the performance of the authors' blurred experience and feelings about the metropolis and the modernity. The desire and fear in the metropolis were expressed by the images of "female ghosts" in an ambiguous way in these texts.The analysis about these two symptom-like text series might initiate the consideration about the special space and time in 1930s' Shanghai. The abnormal prosperity and the mixed modernity atmosphere let this city appear as "the ghost-like city", which was unreal and odd. And it was this nature that yielded the special imagination —"the Shanghai ghost stories".