THESIS
2014
xiii leaves, 101 pages : illustrations ; 30 cm
Abstract
Published by the World Publishing House, The Red Rose magazine was a star in the print
industry of Shanghai from 1924 to 1931. Recently many popular periodicals in the
Republican era have captured the interest of literary scholars, for example like the
shorter-lived magazine Saturday in the early 1920s. Nevertheless, why was The Red Rose so
well-received by the public? How can it be evaluated in the literary history? This thesis
attempts to answer these questions under a thematic investigation of The Red Rose. Female
figures as emblems of urban desire make up one of the rich significations of everyday life and
place. The construction of the half-modern, half-traditional female image crystallizes the “Red
Rose” writers’ ambivalent cultural attitude. Also, the magazine’s sensitivi...[
Read more ]
Published by the World Publishing House, The Red Rose magazine was a star in the print
industry of Shanghai from 1924 to 1931. Recently many popular periodicals in the
Republican era have captured the interest of literary scholars, for example like the
shorter-lived magazine Saturday in the early 1920s. Nevertheless, why was The Red Rose so
well-received by the public? How can it be evaluated in the literary history? This thesis
attempts to answer these questions under a thematic investigation of The Red Rose. Female
figures as emblems of urban desire make up one of the rich significations of everyday life and
place. The construction of the half-modern, half-traditional female image crystallizes the “Red
Rose” writers’ ambivalent cultural attitude. Also, the magazine’s sensitivity towards the
formation and transformation of a new modern public space in Shanghai exemplifies the print
media’s role in the production of an urban imagination. Meanwhile, the magazine effectively
employs visual media and demonstrates many inter-textual experiments between films and the
popular literature. In the past popular magazines have only been used as documents to reflect
the petty urbanites’ mentalities, or as supplementary materials to the canonized literary history,
as they were produced in mass quantity and cannot be placed under the aesthetic scrutiny. Yet
after careful examination, some texts have been rescued from oblivion, and serve as a
convincing argument for the connection between the popular magazine, the
neo-sensationalism school in the 1930s and the later legendary Shanghai writer Aileen Zhang.
Post a Comment