On The Narrative Of Illustrations In Flowers Of Shanghai

In the late Qing Dynasty,due to the introduction of Lithographic technology,the development of urban commerce as well as the formation of professional painters,a large number of excellent illustration novels emerged.Han Bangqing’s novel Flowers of Shanghai is a representative masterpiece during this period.It was first serialized in the novel "Sea Wonder Book",attached with 128 illustrations made by Wu Youru.which are rich,beautifully drawn and narrative.It signals a new development on the basis of traditional Ming and Qing novels.These illustrations reflect the multiculturalism of Shanghai society in the late Qing Dynasty and have great academic research value.The thesis takes the 128 illustrations of the novel Flowers of Shanghai as the research object,and analyzes its contents from three aspects: character,scenic environment and plot depiction,and summarizes the diverse urban culture.It focuses on the interpretation of time and space of the illustrations,and delves into the "intertextual" relationship between the illustrations and the text to analyze the image narrative function.The thesis consists of four chapters.The first chapter is the introduction part,which defines the concept of image narrative,exhibiting the existed research about Flowers of Shanghai and its illustrations so as to find the weak point in the research.It analyze the formation of the novel against the social background from the introduction of Lithographic technology,city business,and the consuming culture of the citizens.The second chapter interprets the image narrative of Flowers of Shanghai and classifies the illustrations according to the performance of the content.Firstly,it analyzes the fashionable prostitutes in the illustrations,commercial hackers,and the bottom-level civic group images that are gradually becoming professional;secondly,it analyzes the various story scenes in the illustrations,the decoration of Chinese and Western brothels,the modern urban landscape and the poetic garden environment to delve the deep cultural connotation behind these landscapes;finally,it analyzes the plot narrative of the novel illustrations,coming to the conclusion that the illustrations in Flowers of Shanghai are good at achieving the connection of the story through a multi-dimensional perspective.And the illustrations are closely related page after page,which,through the scene rendering,enhances the narrative capabilities of the image.The third chapter analyzes the time and space of image narrative from the essence of image narrative,and classifies and discusses the schema composition of Flowers of Shanghai,so as to explore the temporal and spatial expression characteristics of its image narrative.The realization of image narrative depends on the temporalization of space,so it will focus on how the space in the illustrations reflects the time,and how the illustrations realize the reconstruction of time and space.The fourth chapter analyzes the function of image narrative on the basis of the third chapter.The illustration bears three functions of reappearing the text,adding value to the text and criticizing the text in the novel.The image and the text refer to and complement each other,forming the cross-narrative of "text" and "illustration",which affects readers’ reading.