This study examines the reading aspect of the Chinese youth in the 1920s and 30s from the viewpoint of popularization of modern knowledge and formation of modern sensibility through book advertisements during 『Life』 weekly.
Specifically, the Chinese ...
This study examines the reading aspect of the Chinese youth in the 1920s and 30s from the viewpoint of popularization of modern knowledge and formation of modern sensibility through book advertisements during 『Life』 weekly.
Specifically, the Chinese readership of the 1920s and 30s can be said to be the emerging middle class of cities that began to form anew in the southeast coastal region centered on Shanghai. Their interests were very broad. First of all, from personal and daily life such as college and employment, dating and marriage, leisure and recreational life, to those with close interests to their own lives, to the relief of the poor, youth suicide, bureaucratic corruption, and northwestern Local hunger, Chinese civilization, student movement, Cuban revolution, social issues, politics, and international issues were very diverse. In terms of popularization of modern knowledge and formation of modern sensibility, their reading patterns were analyzed through the contents of book advertisements during 『Life』 weekly.
One is the social science-related books such as 『Introduction to Social Philosophy』, 『Reinforcement of Socialism』, 『Soviet Impression』, etc. in the advertisement contents of social science books analyzed in the aspect of popularization of modern knowledge. This can be seen as a result of the request that the readers have to find alternatives that are a way of coping with the situation of the times and a capitalist way of life, and this demand played an important role in the popularization of modern knowledge. On the other hand, the books of the New Life Publishing house include books that systematically theorize three democracy, such as Zhou fohai(周佛海)'s "Theory System of Three Democracy" and "Basic Problem of Three Democracy," These are books that have historically reconstructed Chinese society in terms of politics, economics, and sociology, such as Tao xisheng(陶希聖)'s 『Combination of Chinese Social Phenomenon』 and 『Retrospection and Prospect of Chinese Problems』, and theoretically systematized them. These books can provide theoretical and ideological support for how to view Chinese society from the standpoint of elite readers, and can be viewed as the popularization of modern knowledge from a different perspective.
The other was to analyze the literary book advertisements of Life Publishing house in terms of the formation of modern sensibility. At this time, the life of the emerging urban middle class, the reader of China, was unstable in the reality of a capitalist society, so the desire and anxiety for life in the middle class of cities expanded to the public domain through modern novels, and there was a side that was expressed and resolved. At this time, the sensibility expressed and resonated is modern sensibility, and one of them is the sensibility expressed as the private domain of an individual, represented by love and marriage, is expanded to the public domain through modern novels. Modern novels with such sensibility are mainly love novels, and include “When a Woman Loves” and “The Story of an American Married to a Chinese”, which were serialized during the week of 『Life』 and then published by the Life Bookstore. The modern sensibility that emerged from the illusion of romance and marriage on the premise of love not only played an important role in the formation of modern novels, but also played an important role in forming modern sensibility.