research-article

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

  • JIANG Hui
Expand
  • Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China

Published date: 05 Sep 2011

Copyright

2014 Higher Education Press and Brill

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

Cite this article

JIANG Hui . The Politics of Loitering and the Aesthetics of the Storytelling: A Rereading of Zhao Shuli’s “Rhymes of Li Youcai”[J]. Frontiers of Literary Studies in China, 2011 , 5(3) : 277 -302 . DOI: 10.1007/s11702-011-0130-1

Outlines

/