Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale

Journal | Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale
Journal issue | 59 | 2023
Research Article | Before the Revolution

Before the Revolution

Tradition and Modernity in Two Short Stories by Bao Tianxiao, “Qie ming bo” 妾命薄 and “Yi lü ma” 一縷麻

Abstract

Popular fiction was a particularly successful trend in fiction from the late Qing era through the Republican period. In this fiction, a nostalgic and sentimental preservation of the Ming-Qing cult of qing 情 is clearly visible: romance and freedom of love are the expressions of a modern consciousness which makes individuals out of subjects of the traditional moral code. In a circular move to find solutions to national salvation and social change, sentimental literature searched for a compromise between tradition and modernity. This paper seeks to demonstrate how the Aufhebung of the old contributed to accommodate a still unchartered modernity in two short stories by Bao Tianxiao. The intertextual analysis will show the development of a persistent ambivalence between progress and nostalgia.


Open access | Peer reviewed

Submitted: March 8, 2023 | Accepted: May 2, 2023 | Published Aug. 29, 2023 | Language: it

Keywords Bao TianxiaoIntertextualityQie ming boMandarin Ducks and butterfliesYi lü ma


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