Abstract:

Many obstacles that Britain came across during the urbanization process over one hundred years ago are now challenging China' s urbanization. In this sense, the British modern experience is both Britain' s and part of our own. In the context of contemporary China, reading works of George Gissing, an important city novelist in the late Victorian Era, will help us no longer be restrained to the old distinction between capitalist and socialist ideologies but find much shared experience beyond political culture, including the influence of the rising middle class on literature and culture, the relation between economic oppression and the decline of manliness, the degeneration of creative artists and the commercialization of art, etc. With strong elite consciousness, George Gissing, based on classical humanism, demonstrates how the marketization of literature negatively affects literature, academia, culture and civilization. According to him, the modern city destroys the existence condition for philosophy, art and literature, which exactly symbolizes the degradation of the whole society, even civilization, to becoming vulgar and average.

Key words: George Gissing, literature and market, city concept, cultural imagination