On The Shanghai Writing And Its Cultural Significance In Wang Anyi’s Novels Through The Symbol Of Lane

In the work of depicting Shanghai,Wang Anyi makes Lane the core stage of all her characters and the Lane itself has been abstracted as a cultural symbol.Through the luxury and fascination of Shanghai city,Wang Anyi captures the glamour of urban folk,where there are poetic romance in daily lives in Lanes and common people with persistence.Therefore,starting from the Lane culture,this thesis elaborates on the spirit of urban culture presented through her Shanghai writing and the crisis this spirit faced from 1990 s.The thesis consists of five parts.To begin with,the origin,the significance,and the status quo of the study are explained in the Introduction.The first chapter points out the fact that Wang Anyi reflects her understanding towards the "core" of Shanghai culture through the Lane images she drew,since this relatively “daily” cultural spirit relies deeply on the existence of the Lane.Clearly,Wang’s vision of underlying values makes her outstand from Eileen Chang and it is much different from the old Shanghai nostalgia indulged in that metropolis infested by foreign adventurers.The next chapter focuses on her writing position of Shanghai folk culture.By taking "Tianxiang" and "Fuping" as examples,the thesis discusses the culture genealogy Wang Anyi painstakingly built up through her writing.It can be observed that Wang’s Shanghai portrait which focuses on the joy and sorrow as well as the separation and reunion of the lives at the bottom is in consist with the tradition of emphasizing the secularity in Shanghai Style Literature.The third chapter demonstrates Wang Anyi’s concern for the spiritual home of people and her sense of powerlessness of failing to break out the urban civilization corroded by the wave of consumerism from 1990 s.Finally,Wang Anyi’s unchanged aesthetic features in her Shanghai writing is summarized in the Conclusion part,namely the core of Shanghai culture based on “daily” life by taking the Lane as a carrier.Meanwhile,Wang’s anxiety towards urban culture reflected through her creation when facing the new century urban civilization is illustrated as well in this section.