Chinese Journal of Literary Criticism
No.3, 2025
From Local Path to National Allegory: Narrative Aesthetics of Ye Zhaoyan’s Nanjing Writing(Abstract)
Zhang Guangmang
Ye Zhaoyan’s Nanjing writing takes local experience as the starting point, and through the reconstruction of historical memory, folk polyphonic narrative, excavation of metaphorical value of daily objects and reshaping of cultural connotations of urban space, he constructs a unique modern narrative aesthetics, and realizes the aesthetic sublimation from regionality to the allegory of national spirit. This aesthetic construction uses Nanjing as a “method” rather than an “object,” which not only reveals the national spiritual code contained in local experience, but also implies the resilience of civilization’s rebirth. It also provides an aesthetic paradigm that is both local and global for telling the “Chinese story” in the context of globalization.