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Japanese Modernization and the Emergence of New Fictwn in Early Twentieth Century China: A Study of Liang Qichao

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Hiroko Willcock
Hiroko Willcock
Affiliation:
Griffith University, Australia
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Extract

Inspired by Japanese influences among others the late Qing period saw a great surge in the writing of fiction after 1900. The rate of growth was unprecedented in the history of Chinese literature. The great surge coincided with rapid socio-political changes that China underwent in the last fifteen years of the Qing Dynasty. At the psychological level, the humiliating defeat by Japan in 1895 gave rise to a feeling of urgency for reform among some progressively minded Chinese intellectuals. Those reformers came to view fiction as a powerful medium to further their reform causes and to arouse among the people the awareness of the changes they believed China most urgently required. Fiction was no longer considered as constituting insignificant and trivial writings. It was no longer the idle pastime of retired literati composed to entertain a small circle of their friends, or written by a discontented recluse to vent a personal grudge through a brush. The role of fiction came to be defined in relation to its utility as an influence on politics and society and its artistic quality was subordinated to such a definition.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , October 1995 , pp. 817 - 840
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 Here the political novel is defined broadly as a novel which deals with political ideas, or which analyses political phenomena, or in which the political milieu is the dominant setting. It can be defined as a political novel if it introduces, as material, political or revolutionary events of the past in historical settings or current affairs, or a heroic figure who made a significant contribution to such events. In a narrow sense it must at the same time express a positive direction towards the improvement of the existing social and political milieu. The present article is concerned with the political novel which is defined in the narrow sense.Google Scholar

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