Love’s Illusions and the Disenchantment of Nostalgia: Irony in Wang Anyi’s The Song of Everlasting Sorrow
The masterpiece of Wang Anyi, The Song of Everlasting Sorrow, is frequently interpreted through the framework of Shanghai’s nostalgic revival. Yet beneath its seemingly elegiac surface lies a sustained and penetrating irony directed at nostalgia itself. Drawing upon Cleanth Brooks’s theory of irony and focusing on Wang Qiyao’s three pivotal romantic relationships—with Director Li, Kang Minxun, and Old Colour—this study examines the persistent tension between the characters’ perceptions and the realities that ultimately unfold. Each relationship embodies a distinct amorous illusion: love reduced to an object of exchange, love divested of responsibility, and love sustained through nostalgic projection. At the same time, the novel's prophetic mode of narration establishes a framework of prior negation, subtly foreclosing the fulfilment of these illusions before they have fully taken shape. Together, these two levels of irony converge in a dismantling of the mythos of love associated with Old Shanghai, effecting, in the end, a profound disenchantment of nostalgic aesthetics.
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