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
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
Language
eng
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.
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