What IS 都市文学?

[Li Shen]

如题。

It's a standard literary genre, apparently, since it's on all the literature sites. But I can't find a definition of what it is, anywhere, dictionary, good ole' Chinese internet.

What is it? Does it just refer to major novels and is the same as 长篇小说? Is it novels whose story takes place in cities? Does it refer to "serious" novels with literary or social pretensions?

I'm flabbergasted ...

Edit: Corrected embarassing mistake of writing 首都instead of都市.

Edited January 3, 2010 at 04:42 AM by Li Shen

[Daan]

Isn't the 首都文学界 the literary scene in the capital city? I would assume then that it's "capital literature", as opposed to "provincial literature", but I've never heard this distinction made. Then again, Chinese literature is not really my field, so others might know more. Whatever it is, it's not listed in my New Century dictionary of literary styles.

[gato]

Can't find it on baidu. What are some examples of 首都文学? Which literature sites did you see it on?

[Li Shen]

Uh…… that's slightly embarassing; I've been wondering about that quite some time, and tonight I remembered that mysterium again and posted it here without checking, so...

Of course, it should 都市文学 (or 小说，I've seen both, I think...).

One example would be good old http://book.sina.com.cn/ ， where it clearly seems to be some kind of genre (it's a bit hard to find, but there's a menu that basically says

* 小说馆    * 都市    * 官场
* 历史馆    * 历史    * 人物
* 财经馆    * 经济    * 励志
* 女人馆    * 美容    * 两性
* 青春馆    * 校园    * 言情
* 军事馆    * 战争    * 军旅

Here's another example, basically the same.

I do think that it somehow refers to non-fantasy, non-SciFi, non-military etc. novels, but that's kinda vague...

Examples of include books by writers like Yu Hua and Han Shaogong... but these aren't really typical examples； I mostly find books in the library and then look them up over the internet, not the other way round .

[gato]

都市 refers to big cities. 都市 novels would be novels set in big cities, urban novels, like 王朔, for example.

[Li Shen]

I know what 都市 means...

It's just that what you describe seems kind of an odd choice for a literary genre, since it's either extremely broad (stories that somehow involve a big city) or narrow (stories that deal with the problems of living in a big city as opposed to a 乡镇).

[gato]

The divide between urban and rural does exist in Chinese literature. Writers like 贾平凹, 莫言 and 沈从文 mostly write about rural areas, whereas 王朔, 王安忆 and 王小波 write mostly about big city people, or at least from a big city perspective (as when they write about city youths going to work in rural areas).

If you think about American literature, Paul Auster and Jay McInerney would certainly be considered urban writers. There aren't too rural writers in the US today as not as many people live in rural areas. The divide in the US today probably would be between urban and suburban.

[Daan]

I think you would be looking at the narrower definition here: stories that deal with the consequences of urbanisation, such as how human lives are changed by living in cities, its effects on cultural traditions, what it is like to live in an always-on society. As a non-specialist, I would think such a trend also exists in Europe and the US, although it does not seem to be called "urban literature", since that's a term used for another genre still according to Wikipedia. Let me just think if I can come up with any examples. Ian McEwan's Saturday springs to mind, but that one might be better classified as magical-realism.

[gato]

I forgot that in the US "urban" is usually used to refer to "black", as whites have moves out of the big cities for the suburbs in the 1960s and 70s.

[lingjas]

This is what we use to classify internet literature. 都市basically means stories which are set in modern society in city context. They can be stories, novels, life experience. It can be fiction or non fiction, like people with superpowers after being strike by tunderbolt or the lifestory of someone who lives in a city. All this are considered 都市，so long it is set in a city.