1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910463667803321

Autore

Field David

Titolo

Mu Shiying : China's lost modernist / / new translations and an appreciation by Andrew David Field

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Hong Kong, China : , : Hong Kong University Press, , 2014

©2014

ISBN

988-8268-34-1

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (189 p.)

Collana

RAS China in Shanghai series

Disciplina

895.109005

Soggetti

Authors, Chinese - 20th century

Electronic books.

China History Republic, 1912-1949

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (pages l-liv) and index.

Nota di contenuto

List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- Mu Shiying: An Appreciation of His Life, Times and Works -- Selected Stories of Mu Shiying -- The Man Who Was Treated as a Plaything -- Five in a Nightclub -- Craven 'A' -- Night 89 -- Shanghai Fox-trot 103 -- Black Peony -- Index.

Sommario/riassunto

When the avant-garde writer Mu Shiying was assassinated in 1940, China lost one of its greatest modernist writers while Shanghai lost its most detailed chronicler of its demi-monde nightlife. As Andrew David Field argues, Mu Shiying advanced modern Chinese writing beyond the vernacular expression of May 4 giants Lu Xun and Lao She to even more starkly reveal the alienation of the cosmopolitan-capitalist city of Shanghai, trapped between the forces of civilization and barbarism. Each of these five short stories focuses on the author's key obsessions: the pleasurable yet anxiety-ridden social and sexual relationships of the modern city and the decadent maelstrom of consumption and leisure in Shanghai epitomized by the dance hall and the nightclub. This study places his writings squarely within the framework of Shanghai's social and cultural nightscapes.