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Traveling through Time and Searching for Utopia: Utopian Imaginaries in Internet Time-Travel Fiction |
Shuang XU() |
U.F.R. Langues et Civilisations de l'Asie Orientale, Université Paris Diderot - Paris VII, Casier 7009 16, rue Marguerite Duras, 75205 Paris Cedex 13, France |
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Abstract The time-travel genre of Chinese Internet literature combines old mythological motifs with contemporary science fiction approaches to create a narrative line in which the protagonist travels through time, undergoes a series of trials, discovers new worlds, and realizes an idealized life. Borrowing Foucault’s theory of utopian bodies and heterotopias and taking Tianxia Guiyuan’s female-oriented Internet novel Empress Fuyao as its exemplary case, this study analyzes how time-travel fiction uses time travel in order to image a “utopia” and what kind of “new world” is projected by this utopia. In the process, this paper will simultaneously examine the relationship between utopia and twenty-first century China’s new media literature.
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Keywords
Internet literature
time-travel fiction
utopian body
heterotopia
Tianxia Guiyuan
Empress Fuyao
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Issue Date: 26 April 2016
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