Urban Imaginings in the Context of Modernity: A Comparative Study of Shanghai's New Sensationist Literature of the 1930s and American Novels of the Jazz Age
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Urban Imaginings in the Context of ModernityAbstract
In the academic context of globalization and modernity studies, the Shanghai New Sensationist literature of the 1930s and the American novels of the Jazz Age have shifted to a comparative space of urban imagination writing. This paper takes the New Sensationist writers such as Mu Shiying and Liu Naou, and the American novelists such as Fitzgerald and Dos Passos as research subjects. It approaches from three dimensions: urban space, sensory experience, and modernity anxiety, to systematically compare the similarities and differences in urban imagination writing between the two literary schools. This study cannot fully cover all the characteristics of the works. The research finds that the Shanghai New Sensationist literature, through the fragmented sensory writing of the modern city, completes the capture and reflection of modernity experience in the context of consumer culture, while the American novels of the Jazz Age present the disillusionment of urban desires and realize the questioning and criticism of the American Dream in the midst of material prosperity. Such research provides strong support for modern literary studies.
