The Politics of Loitering and the Aesthetics of the Storytelling: A Rereading of Zhao Shuli’s “Rhymes of Li Youcai”

Abstract

This essay traces a modernist aspect of Zhao Shuli’s fiction to his popular story “Rhymes of Li Youcai.” By using an analogy of flaneur from French resources, the essays argues that the major hero’s action delineated as a constant loitering suggests a special mode of intellectual being in his relation to the social and political life he lives in, which is quite exceptional in modern Chinese literature. Moreover, a close reading raises a few theoretical questions about the nature of his storytelling art and invites a rethinking of the relationship between the May Fourth Enlightenment Literature and the Revolutionary Literature. Keywords Zhao

Key words： Zhao Shuli; “Rhymes of Li Youcai,” peasant intellectual; public affair; modern Chinese literature