Ongoing Realism: Multi-dimension On Realism Literature In The 1920s

Through experiencing, analyzing of May-4th-new-writers and their theoretical thinking and creative practice, this article restores the occurrence of the initial conditions of the 20th Century Realism in literature from the perspective of modernity. It also explores the extremely rich and complex resources during this period of time to further promote the research of Realism literature.The concept of time-the 1920s, which is relatively concentrated, is adopted in this article to designate the emergence period of Chinese Realism Literature. Approximately, it stretches across the transition phase from Literary Revolution to Revolutionary Literature, dating back to the time before The May 4th Movement and continuing to the beginning of the 1930s.The reason of constructing the analysis framework is: Although modernity in China's culture originated in late Qing Dynasty and the literary practice of realism had been sprouting in the Late Qing Dynasty and the Early Republic of China, realism in literature was relatively autonomous and mature just after the May 4th Movement. It's in the 1920s that the writers, owing to the different understanding, imagining and demands of Modern China, re-interpreted the alien's "realism" from their own perspective and position. Different dimensions of narrative practice were adopted and the writers attained remarkable literary achievement. Hence, the 1920s after The May 4th Movement could be treated as the emergence period of Chinese Realism Literature in the context of modernity throughout the history of realism literature.The author argues that in the prime period of time, Chinese Realism Literature actually presents very complex outlook because of the multi-level contradiction and the intricacies of the era in modernity. Much evidence from the literary history indicates that there are many dimensions, directivities and possibilities of the development of reality from the very beginning. Roughly, the directivities mentioned and refined in the article can represent the initial stage of main exploration of Chinese Realism Literature, and also indicate the possible ways of the developing of realism in China.The basic contents of the article are as follows:After analyzing the relationship between realism and modernity, introduction discusses why realism can be the main body of Chinese Modern Literature and the social, historical and cultural reasons why Chinese Realism Literature had formed many dimensions in the beginning.Chapter I to IV, as the trunk of the article, taking the representative writers, Lu Xun, Yu Dafu, Jiang Guangci and Mao Dun successively as examples, reveals how the narrative difference and the different literary pursuit of multi-dimensions of realism generated the literary reality in the 1920s and potentially intervened in the process of getting hidden, growth and decline, changing of the different dimensions of realism afterwards. The main points are as follows:1, Lu Xun/the Dimension of Fable. Lu Xun's realistic novels, often by means of allegory, were full of metaphor of tensions. Especially in "Scream" and "Wandering", fable thinking and realistic awareness was closely jointed, and the means of artistic expression such as pan-time status, non-plot, irony, collective mental characterization were widely employed in his realistic works. These works described something by referring to it as something else, forming a unique national culture fable.2, Yu Dafu/the Dimension of Lyric. Countless young people after the May 4th Movement were touched by Yu Dafu's realism works with subjective and lyrical style. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Yu Dafu tried approaching the so-called objective and realistic writing style, and even attempted to reproduce the major social reality under the inspiration of the revolution. But he was severely criticized for falling behind the revolutionary writers' expectation of the "essence of realism". Eventually, Yu Dafu proposed a new view - "realism of mercy", which fully demonstrated his remarkable vision to expand realism.3.Jiang Guangci/the Dimension of Ideal. Jiang Guangci's practice may show that "realism" plus "romanticism" is feasible. His realistic approach to adhere to the ideal, at least in view of the fact of literary history, is the origin of the combination of "revolutionary romanticism" and "revolutionary realism", it can be said the prototype of the combination. It should be concerned that Jiang Guangci preliminarily constructed the narrative convention of "revolutionary literature". Collectivism, heroic personality, optimism in the Revolutionary Realism Literature in the 1950s and 1960s can be traced to his works.4.Mao Dun/the Dimension of Epic. His pursuit of realism with twists and turns embodied in novel creation intensively. He hoped that novels reflected the "present" structure of social life, and could display the evolution and campaign in history. It fully reflected the impact of Marxist historical materialism on Mao Dun. He sought the general nature of reality, bringing a kind of grand, panoramic view and epic writing into the history of Chinese modern literature.Epilogue concludes that the classification of the different dimensions of the beginning of Chinese Realism Literature while using the different rhetoric terms can't eliminate the mutual transition, supplement and even progressive relationship among the different dimensions. Realism had shown flexibility according to different needs, such as Lu Xun's collective mental characterization, Yu Dafu's individual psychological depiction, Jiang Guangci's combination of "personal liberation" and "bourgeois revolution", Mao Dun's totality of social relations, fully displaying the adaptability and vitality of realism itself.