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Walking or Reading the City : Spatiotemporal narrative forms in contemporary urban Chinese fiction

Møller-Olsen, Astrid LU (2017) Popular Literature in Contemporary China
Abstract
In his influential essay ‘Walking in the City’, Michel de Certeau contrasts the practice of walking in the city, which produces or ‘enounces’ space; “[t]he act of walking is to the urban system what the speech act is to language,” with the practice of viewing the city from above, which in turn “transforms the bewitching world by which one was ‘possessed’ into a text that lies before one’s eyes.” This paper takes de Certeau’s distinction as the point of departure for an analysis of two very different narrative strategies for dealing with complex urban realities in contemporary Chinese fiction, namely 朱天心 Chu Tien-hsin’s 古都 Old Capital (1996) set in Taipei and Hong Kong writer 董启章 Dung Kai-cheung’s 地图集 Atlas (1997).
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to conference
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Walking, literary cartography, Hong Kong fiction, Taiwanese fiction, Chinese literature, de Certeau
conference name
Popular Literature in Contemporary China
conference location
Geneva, Switzerland
conference dates
2017-06-16 - 2017-06-17
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
b9586bf5-e7ed-432d-b217-20fa52e5207e
alternative location
https://www.unige.ch/lettres/estas/files/2114/9625/7710/Astrid_MO._Walking_or_Reading_the_City._Thought_Paper.pdf
date added to LUP
2018-01-19 12:56:26
date last changed
2018-11-21 21:37:25
@misc{b9586bf5-e7ed-432d-b217-20fa52e5207e,
  abstract     = {{In his influential essay ‘Walking in the City’, Michel de Certeau contrasts the practice of walking in the city, which produces or ‘enounces’ space; “[t]he act of walking is to the urban system what the speech act is to language,”  with the practice of viewing the city from above, which in turn “transforms the bewitching world by which one was ‘possessed’ into a text that lies before one’s eyes.”  This paper takes de Certeau’s distinction as the point of departure for an analysis of two very different narrative strategies for dealing with complex urban realities in contemporary Chinese fiction, namely 朱天心 Chu Tien-hsin’s 古都 Old Capital (1996) set in Taipei and Hong Kong writer 董启章 Dung Kai-cheung’s 地图集 Atlas (1997).}},
  author       = {{Møller-Olsen, Astrid}},
  keywords     = {{Walking, literary cartography, Hong Kong fiction, Taiwanese fiction, Chinese literature, de Certeau}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{06}},
  title        = {{Walking or Reading the City : Spatiotemporal narrative forms in contemporary urban Chinese fiction}},
  url          = {{https://www.unige.ch/lettres/estas/files/2114/9625/7710/Astrid_MO._Walking_or_Reading_the_City._Thought_Paper.pdf}},
  year         = {{2017}},
}