Acknowledgment List of Figures Introduction 1 Debates of the Origin of Chinese Modernity and Its Substance 2 Semicolonialism and Modernist Writing 3 Field of Cultural Production and Literature as Social Institution 4 The Problematic of Historicity and Political Hermeneutics 5 Fictional Writing in the Great Transformative Epoch of 1940s China 6 Chinese Modernity in Ordeal: New Culture, New Youth, New Women 7 Literary Modernity and Modernization of "Modern Chinese Literature" 8 Structural Outline Part 1: Negotiating with the Nightmarish Modern Introduction 1 General Cultural Production in the Occupied Area 2 Some Thoughts on the Origin of Modern Chinese Literature 3 Zhang Henshui's Early Efforts at Modernization of Chinese Fiction1 Aborted Dreams of "New Women": Xiao Hong and Mei Niang 1 A Homeless Soul and a Misplaced Nostalgia: Exiled Experience and Xiao Hong's War-Time Diasporic Literature 2 Articulating the Disenchantment of Colonial Modernity: Mei Niang's Representation of the Predicament of Chinese New Women2 Matrimonial Syndrome in a Besieged Society: Identity Complex in Eileen Chang's "Boudoir Stories" 1 Individualism in Crisis and Cultural Nihilism 2 Identity Politics and the Political Unconscious in Writing "Triviality" Part 2: Rethinking the Disintegrated Modern Introduction 1 The Restructuration of the Field of Cultural Production 2 The Diversified Writings of Fiction 3 Hu Feng's Theory of "Subjective Fighting Spirit"3 Alienated Minds Dreaming for Integration: Constrained Cosmopolitanism in Wumingshi's and Xu Xu's "Modern Literati Novel" 1 Wumingshi's Middle Class Romance and "Anti-Bildungsroman" 2 Xu Xu's "Modern Tales of the Strange" 3 Conclusion4 "Subjectivity" and Class Consciousness: Intellectual's Predicament and Lu Ling's "Neo-Leftist Stories" 1 Individualism and Aborted Bildungsroman: the Cultural Politics of Lu Ling's Stories in 1940s China 2 Politics of Recognition and Politics of Style A Reading of Children of the Rich with Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind Part 3: Contending for a "New Democratic Modern" Introduction 1 The "Cultural Field" of Yan'an, Its Political Economy and Production 2 Forging a New Cultural-Political Nation: from "Use of Old Forms" to "Establishment of a National Form" 3 Re-integration of Culture and Politics: a Re-Interpretation of Mao's "Yan'an Talks"5 "Problem Stories" as Part of the "National Form": Rural Society in Transition and Zhao Shuli's "Peasant Stories" 1 Rural Society in Transition and the "Standing Up" of the Masses 2 The "Alternative Modernity" of the Storytelling and Its Paradox6 From Feminist to Party's Intellectual? Identity (Trans-)formation and Ding Ling's "New Woman Stories" 1 From an Anarchist "New Woman" to a Cultural Worker for the Masses 2 Ambiguities and Contradictions in Creating a "New Revolutionary Culture" Conclusion References Index.