Alice as an observer: A study on Shen Congwen’s Alice’s Travels in China

Liu, Yangyang

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/121411 Copy

Description

Title

Alice as an observer: A study on Shen Congwen’s Alice’s Travels in China

Author(s)

Liu, Yangyang

Issue Date

2023-07-20

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Chen, Jingling

Department of Study

E. Asian Languages & Cultures

Discipline

E Asian Languages & Cultures

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

M.A.

Degree Level

Thesis

Keyword(s)

Shen Congwen, Alice's Travels in China

Abstract

This thesis is a literary study of how Shen Congwen applies Alice, an alien adolescent girl, to his novel Alice’s Travels in China (1928). Borrowing the title and major characters from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Shen Congwen does not intend to write a strictly sequel to the famous work. Instead, he assigns the role of observer to Alice, to whom the various evil in China is exposed. Alice’s innocence and naivete could have served as a weapon to highlight social turmoil and injustice in China. By historicizing the character patterns and close reading, nevertheless, I argue that Shen Congwen fails to reconcile Alice’s characteristics of “alien” and “young” with his social criticism intention seamlessly in this fiction. Shen employs agents to supplement Alice’s limited narrative power, which in turn ruins the uniqueness of the narrative. Though Shen finally recognizes Alice’s agency as an observer in the last chapter of the book, it is not until he creates characters like Xiaoxiao, Sansan, and Cuicui in the early 1930s that he realizes the potential of adolescent female characters to full.

Graduation Semester

2023-08

Type of Resource

Thesis

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2023 Yangyang Liu

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