Ruins, allegory and redemption - The Writing of Urban Tragedy in the 1990s from the Perspective of Benjamin 's "Wanderer"
DOI: https://doi.org/10.62381/ACS.SSFS2025.23
Author(s)
Luan Jiarui
Affiliation(s)
School of Chinese Language and Literature, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, Shandong, China
Abstract
Tragedy, as one of the aesthetic categories, has developed and turned such as 'tragedy of fate', 'tragedy of negligence', 'tragedy of character' since ancient Greece, and its core bearing and direction are also different. Benjamin's "ruins aesthetics" is based on the origin of German tragedy, which sets up a new direction for tragedy in modern fables, and gives tragedy new meaning in the form of "ruins-allegory-redemption". In the cultural context of China, the most representative feature of 'ruins' is the breakthrough of 'fracture' writers in the literary world in the 1990s. The urban landscape they constructed is to a certain extent consistent with "ruins-allegory-redemption", which potentially shows the tragic direction and ultimate pursuit of 'fracture' writers and Benjamin's 'redemption'.
Keywords
Benjamin; Tragedy; Ruins aesthetics; Fracture' New Generation Writers; Wanderers
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