Includes bibliographical references and index.

Front Matter -- Copyright page -- Acknowledgments -- Editorial Note -- Introductory Steps to Utopia -- Of Textual Territories and Literary Cartographies -- Gesturing toward Utopia -- Empires Erased, Empires Rewritten -- The Staging of the Utopian Spectacle -- The Celebration of the Utopian Spectacle -- Utopia’s Carnivalization -- Back Matter -- New Year’s Dream, by Cai Yuanpei -- Bibliography -- Index.

In Hundred Days’ Literature , Lorenzo Andolfatto explores the landscape of early modern Chinese fiction through the lens of the utopian novel, casting new light on some of its most peculiar yet often overshadowed literary specimens. The wutuobang or lixiang xiaoshuo , by virtue of its ideally totalizing perspective, provides a one-of-a-kind critical tool for the understanding of late imperial China’s fragmented Zeitgeist . Building upon rigorous close reading and solid theoretical foundations, Hundred Days’ Literature offers the reader a transcultural critical itinerary that links Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward to Wu Jianren’s Xin Shitou ji via the writings of Liang Qichao, Chen Tianhua, Bihe Guanzhuren, and Lu Shi’e. The book also includes the first English translation of Cai Yuanpei’s short story “New Year’s Dream.”