Revolutionary History Prospect And National Imagination

Through rereading some revolutionary history novels in the New China from the vision of national imagination, the author of this dissertation manages to find out their special role in the process of China's modernization.The dissertation consists of six parts: introduction, history, revolution, heroes, epics and conclusion. The following is the main content:The introduction part introduces the academic background of the problem researched, defines the main theoretical categories concerned, and further gives a tentative generalization to the relationship between revolutionary history novels and national imagination in the New China. The proposal of the problem is based on the discussion on the relationship between national imagination and China's contemporary literature in the late 1980s. The author manages to make a concrete and thorough research on the problem. The key theoretical questions consist of nation, national imagination and revolutionary history novels in the New China. In the introduction, the author thinks that "nation" should be understood from the sense of modern politics. Nation came into being during the process of modernization. It is a social formation originating in Britain and France and then spreading all over the world. It attaches importance to the integration and co-operation of political organizations. The integration and co-operation involves elements of imagination. In the background of modernization, the political organization is even a kind of imagined communities. This theory of imagined communities, which was firstly put forward by Anderson, a modern western nationalism theorist, is actually modern national imagination. The revolutionary history novels in the New China are restricted as the novels from 1949-the founding of the People's Republic of China to 1966-the consolidation period in China, reflecting the revolution led by the Communist Party of China. The introduction points out the revolutionary history novels have their peculiar advantages in modern national imagination. Besides, the introduction expounds the basic aims: on the one hand, to obtain a more appropriate understanding about the revolutionary history novels in the vision of national imagination, on the other hand, to obtain the enlightenment on the mastery of the entire literature in the New China and even that of China's contemporary literature through the understanding.In Chapter One, through the exploration of the historical content of revolutionary history novels in the New China, the author believes that the great interest of the novels in revolutionary history lies in the urgent need of reconstructing the memory of the new modern national history, which is the revolutionary history. The change from making the revolution historic to making history revolutionaryindicates that the revolutionary history novels are gradually reinforced in the reconstruction of the memory of revolutionary history. Notably, the end of the reconstruction is the recognition of the reality in the New China. Therefore, the narration of the revolutionary history novels is actually a "present" organization of the history.Chapter Two explores the revolutionary theme of New China's revolutionary history novels. In this chapter, the author thinks revolution is the basic means of founding a nation, which means any imagination of modern nation cannot run away with the imagination on revolution. Conversely, any imagination of modern revolution is sure to constitute the important content of national imagination. The "revolutionary" imagination of revolutionary history novels is just formed in this background. The purpose of the novels is to engrave the sense of "revolution" in every person's inner mind through imagination of "revolution", hence to integrate revolution and the modern nation to realize the nation's further modernization. The dissemination prospect, the carnival prospect and the ritual prospect of revolution have realized their engraving of revolutionary sense in the scale of rational recognition, worldly, experience and religious fe...