Traveling through Time and Searching for Utopia: Utopian Imaginaries in Internet Time-Travel Fiction

Shuang XU

PDF(343 KB)
PDF(343 KB)
Front. Lit. Stud. China ›› 2016, Vol. 10 ›› Issue (1) : 113-132. DOI: 10.3868/s010-005-016-0007-2
Orginal Article
Orginal Article

Traveling through Time and Searching for Utopia: Utopian Imaginaries in Internet Time-Travel Fiction

Author information +
History +

Abstract

The time-travel genre of Chinese Internet literature combines old mythological motifs with contemporary science fiction approaches to create a narrative line in which the protagonist travels through time, undergoes a series of trials, discovers new worlds, and realizes an idealized life. Borrowing Foucault’s theory of utopian bodies and heterotopias and taking Tianxia Guiyuan’s female-oriented Internet novel Empress Fuyao as its exemplary case, this study analyzes how time-travel fiction uses time travel in order to image a “utopia” and what kind of “new world” is projected by this utopia. In the process, this paper will simultaneously examine the relationship between utopia and twenty-first century China’s new media literature.

Keywords

Internet literature / time-travel fiction / utopian body / heterotopia / Tianxia Guiyuan / Empress Fuyao

Cite this article

Download citation ▾
Shuang XU. Traveling through Time and Searching for Utopia: Utopian Imaginaries in Internet Time-Travel Fiction. Front. Lit. Stud. China, 2016, 10(1): 113‒132 https://doi.org/10.3868/s010-005-016-0007-2

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press and Brill
PDF(343 KB)

Accesses

Citations

Detail

Sections
Recommended

/