Study On Urban Novels Since1990

With the acceleration of Open and Reform Policy since1980s, China has experienced a dramatic change in various dimensions, including economic boom, business prosperity. The high pace of social development brings about certain influence on the progression of urban literature, which attracts growing attention of critics and scholars in the academic field. At the blossom age of urban literature, Cantonese urban novels enter the main stream with its remarkable character. As a component of urban literature, Cantonese urban novels not only share the similarities with urban novels in the90s, revealing the mundane life and personal desire of the low class in the social ladder; but also reflect the regional features of Ling Nan culture, such as commercialization, moderation and localization.In order to better facilitate the research, the essay is divided into three sections. The first section is an introduction of the history and current situation of Cantonese urban novels, with focus on the analysis of the influential elements, such as geographic location, economy, politics and authors. The second section mainly covers both the discussion of the themes and topics of Cantonese urban novels since the90s and the summary, based on specific texts of novels, of four major topics, i.e. hope and helplessness of dream pursuing, strain and struggle of self actualizing, battle and bitterness of surviving in the city, ecstasy and ebb of being the deviants. The final section explores the artistic features of Cantonese urban novels since the90s, which are generalized into three aspects—compassion and humanity of authors through the approach of realism; bravery and creativity of composers via the use of a large variety of genres; counter effect of readers’preferences on the authors with regard to the aesthetic pursuit of popularization, which also predicts the trend of future development of Cantonese urban novels.