Abstract
This paper takes the utopian fiction in Late Qing Dynasty as a discursive formation, and investigates its production and operational mode of the utopian discourse. The paper examines how literary journals and newspapers served as a channel for the operation of the utopian discourse in the Chinese public sphere. By revising Habermas's notion of the public sphere, Rudolf Wagner is able to redefine Chinese public sphere and discovers that the structure of Chinese public sphere is constructed by the top and the bottom strata of the society. In light of Wagner's theorization, the paper takes the utopian novels as a form of public opinion and the literary journals and newspapers as a media of public sphere. The paper singles out two fiction journals, Monthly Fiction and Racing Independent Club Fiction Monthly, as the object of study, and examines the vertical relationship between the utopian novels published and the Qing court. The paper demonstrates how the imagination of a future China is represented in these utopian fictional writings as a constructed concept, and concludes that the production of the public opinion can become a new approach to study the formation of utopian discourse in Late Qing Dynasty.
First Page
128
Last Page
137
Recommended Citation
Shuk, Man Leung. 2012. "The Public Sphere and Literary Journals and Newspapers: Investigating the Discursive Formation of the Utopia in Late Qing Dynasty." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 32, (1): pp.128-137. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol32/iss1/18
