“Slow Urbanization” and Shaanxi Literature in “New Century”

Title：“Slow Urbanization” and Shaanxi Literature in “New Century” (“新世纪”陕西文学与“缓慢城市化”)

Author：

WANG Yujuan (王昱娟)

PhD   2011 Dissertation  

Abstract：

Based on the comparative reading texts of four Shaanxi novels—Tumen, Gao Xing, Leaves Falls In Chang’an, and Heavy House—concerning the issues in urbanization after periods of year 2000 and the first-hand information obtained through the “Village-In-City” field work，this paper will try to demonstrate the different cultural perspectives between the main-stream “Fast Urbanization” and “settlement gathered by urban-localism” in “Slow Urbanization” which could treat as “Village-In-City”. Therefore, this paper on the one hand is going to trace the living experiences within people in Xi’an which could makes us witness the advent and vanished due to people’s life have changed. On the other hand, we also will penetrate the clues from the literary texts that represent the depth of spiritual world of mankind so that could enable us to understand how another part of Xi’an may show its dissimilar features that is surrounded by the rest parts of the city in which encounter the “Fast Urbanization”. From the perspectives of “urbanized experiences”, generally speaking, the various mental and spiritual phenomenons which would be demonstrated as non-smooth and impeded in “Fast Urbanization” are far from the processes of “Village-In-City” in Xi’an in which experience the “Slow Urbanization”. The questions, however, need to be puzzled out in this paper as follows: how is the impeded process shaped? Besides mental distress, internal contradictions, postponement of people’s being reformed, and etc, does positive aspects of the process exist and yield heterogeneous cultural factors that could not be completely reconstructed by the main-stream spiritual structure? Doubtlessly, this paper combines and is affected by two dimensions, Literature and Sociology.

Contents：

The paper is divided into four parts.

The first part, the exordium, mainly discusses the research motivation, “comparative reading texts” method, and the paper’s position and innovation in the existing research field.

The overall statement contains three chapters, exploring several questions raised by the exordium. Chapter 1 “The Discomfort in Cities” emphasizes on the discomfort of those move into the city from outside during the “urbanization” process. The uncomfortable feelings among the citizens who live in the“settlement gathered by urban-localism”, such like the “Village-In-City” can be mainly described as the “structural bottom” feelings, which cover body feelings and emotional structures; Chapter 2 “The Buffer Action of ‘Village-In-City’” reveals how the feelings are alleviate or even counteracted where meanwhile the daily life, however, resists the marginalization of emotions aroused by the “Fast Urbanization”. Based on the corresponding relations between Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, Chapter 3 “The ‘Slow Urbanization’ as A Method” abstractly seeks for the existence of “Slow Urbanization”, a possible way of showing difference—or in other words, standing against the “Fast Urbanization” which would bring people “discomfort”.