Ancient Fiction and Urban Culture Studies

Author: Ge Yonghai
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-12-01
Features: Ancient novels have a special relationship with cities: on one hand, cities have significantly influenced the production and development of novels; on the other hand, the vivid urban scenes depicted in ancient novels are a reflection of the visualized life in ancient cities. This paper focuses on the latter aspect. Primarily using ancient novels as the research subject, it explores the urban culture existing in various forms within them. The overall approach of this paper is to describe the urban culture in novels from the Tang Dynasty to the late Qing Dynasty in a vertical, diachronic manner. At the same time, it adopts a structure that combines vertical and horizontal perspectives to analyze typical cities reflected in the novels from different angles. In the research, it strives to use heterogeneous Chinese traditional ruralization and Western urbanization as reference frameworks. Methodologically, this book employs the methods of mutual verification between literature and history, as well as interdisciplinary cross-study.