The Narrative Research Of Chinese Urban Children's Novels Since The 1980s

Chinese children's fictions with urban settings refer to works for children and juniors that based on urban space from mainland China and 1980s.This thesis mainly focuses on realistic works using fantasy counterparts as supporting analytical texts.Based on the general social context of the New Period and overviewing the history of Chinese domestic children's fictions,the ones with urban settings have already been a remarkable literary phenomenon.The "narrative research" here unfolds in two aspects:the content as well as the strategy.In addition,this thesis carries out the study of Chinese children's fictions with urban settings as a potential sub-genre in a comparative perspective with the rural ones.The overall text analyses rest on "urban" and"children" respectively and simultaneously,and further inquire the value also criticize the insufficient of these works both from the textual as well as the cultural terrain.The introduction part begins with a clarification of Chinese children's fictions with urban settings from 1980s.Aware of the current research from home and abroad,this part presents the goal,expected value and relevant theoretical approaches of this thesis.Chapter one discusses urban landscapes in the narrative setting,from sketching out the external social context to closely analyzing the textual representations.In the content aspect,urban landscapes are hierarchical presented to match the complexity and diversity of urban space.In the form aspect,the descriptions either overlook the urban landscapes with a focus on child characters or view them at the front horizontally as performed by a child flaneur,which both fit the spatial trait and strengthen children's affective interaction with the urban space.Chapter two focuses on the rhetoric of child characters.Urban setting induces new characterization strategies such as tagging fictional children with special names,foodways,and private spaces.Turning to the content,this part mainly deals with fictional young girls which feature children's fictions with urban settings probing the gender ideology.It is concluded that based on urban settings these fictions undergo a change from featuring feminity to partly breaking the privative gender discourse by employing girls or boys' cross-dressing.Chapter three lays the emphasis on the narrative discourse.Firstly,the intervention from the narrator in fictions under third person forms a friendly tone towards children as narratees.And in fictions under first person,texts are narrated from the fictional children's perspective rather than being distracted by adult narrators.Under these two circumstances,it is showed that children's fictions with urban settings are always written to children with a clear consciousness.Secondly,urban setting generates its specific humor,which is either ridiculous or ironic,by repetitive wording and forcing causality.According to the aforementioned analyses,chapter four states the value evaluation dialectically from two aspects:the representation and reflection of urban culture as well as the construction of children's subjectivity and childhood spirit.In the textual terrain,current fictions with urban settings innovate the narrative forms,and enrich the child character pedigree although there exist some stereotypical writings.In the cultural terrain,admittedly,current works bear living circumstances and sentiment in daily writings,they are insufficient in criticizing the reality.However,what is of great significance to further promote the writing of Chinese children's fictions with urban settings is that authors should not only write to children but also write with their subjectivity.