National Imagination in Science Fiction of the Late Qing Dynasty

초록

At the beginning of the 20th century, China was invaded by eight countries because of the Boxer Incident, and Beijing was captured. The country faced a tragic situation of huge compensation. In such a conflicting situation between the modern civilization of the Western European powers and the traditional Chinese culture, China’s traditional world view(天下主义) collapsed. At the same time, the reformist intellectuals represented by Liang Qichao(梁启超) gradually realized that the reason for the decline of China’s national power was the lack of national consciousness and national concept. Therefore, under the advocacy of Liang Qichao, the national consciousness from the West began to take shape. How to instill the national consciousness into the people has become an issue of concern to the intellectuals. At this time, the novel, a special literary genre, came into being and participated in the description of the understanding and imagination of the modern country, and played an important role in enlightening the people and disseminating the national consciousness. In the early 20th century, novelists with national consciousness narrated their imagination of the future state system, which is a concrete description of the state form. It also includes the novelists’ criticism of the real state form and their fantasy of building the future state plan. Among the various types of fiction in the late Qing Dynasty, science fiction became popular and occupied an important position. It takes scientific knowledge as the material of fiction, and is a new type of fiction that combines the real society with the fantasy of the future world. Science fiction was first introduced into China for the purpose of disseminating scientific knowledge, but like political fiction, it has clear utilitarian significance, enlightens the people and brings the characteristics of patriotism to the people. Concern about the real society and imagination of the ideal world in the future are the narrative characteristics of science fiction at that time. The fantasy part of science fiction reflects the author’s imagination of building a future country. In the fantasy world of late Qing fiction, not only state sovereignty and political system are complete and sound, but also science and technology are comparable to Western countries. In 1902, Liang Qichao advocated “young Chinese theory”(少年中国说) and began to build a new image of China in the future world. In this paper, the representative scientific novels of the late Qing Dynasty, such as “Xin Fa Luo Xian Sheng Tan”(《新法螺先生谭》), “Xin Shi Tou Ji”(《新石头记》), “Shi Zi Hou”(《狮子吼》), “Dian Shi Jie”(《电世界》), “Xin Ji Yuan”(《新 纪元》), etc., are taken as the research objects, and four chapters are used to analyze the criticism of the real society and the vision and fantasy of the future national image in the novel works, so as to complete the imaginary community, strengthen the national consciousness and finally finish. The narrative tendency and characteristics of science novelists in the late Qing Dynasty established by the nation-state.