Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No. 10, 2023

The Narrative of Modernization in Chinese Urban Literature since the New Period

(Abstract)

Lu Zhen

Since the new period, urban literature has developed in parallel with China’s modernization process. Urban literature’s narrative of modernization has had an important impact on contemporary literature. Writers delve into the physical landscape of the city and the inner world of urban dwellers, writing about the improvement of the modern functions of the city, the reform of the economic system, the integrated development of urban and rural areas, and the shaping of the cultural personality, imagining an ideal form of the city and the urbanites, and establishing a two-way interactive narrative between the “modernization of the city” and the “modernization of humanity.” As the value kernel of the narrative of modernization in urban literature, the “modernization of humanity” takes the modernization experience of man in the city as a link, highlights the multidirectional qualities of the mind of city dwellers, and explores the ideal civic ethics and morality. Entering the new era, the narrative of modernization in urban literature pursues the double deepening of “poetry” and “thought.” Based on the task of building a modern socialist country in all aspects, it aims at enriching the people’s inner world, discovering and paying attention to emerging social groups in a timely fashion, creating an ideal humanistic atmosphere in the city, cultivating the city’s spiritual character, and providing cultural support for the advancement and expansion of the Chinese path to modernization.