China Social Science Review

No.3, 2023

Modern Shanghai, Metropolis-Homeland and Urban China: The Paradigm Transformation of Contemporary Urban Literature Study

(Abstract)

Zhu Jun

Through analyzing and pondering the research paradigms of “modern Shanghai” and “metropolis-homeland,” history of modern literature is increasingly regarded as an intrinsically sequential integration, further confirming the unique subjective nature of urban literature in China. Correspondingly, its disenchanted and regenerated nativeness has come into being on the basis of impact, debate and backlash of modernity. Thus, a new core proposition and research paradigm of urban literature is born: “recording China in the city” and writing the “urban China,” that is, in the course of cross-reference of the tradition and the present, highlighting the local-urban-global coexistence, and exploring the continuity of Chinese urban literature from culture and tradition in the context of globalization, as well as current local experiences generation, so as to realize the inheritance and transcendence of both classicism and modernity.