Choice & Spread

Chinese modern literature refers to a specific period of time in China's literature history, which covers from 1900-1949, when China was governed by Guoming Party (Guoming Dang). This thesis is a study relating to spreading and accept of Chinese modern literature in the context of contemporary circumstance. It is also a study relating to a specific area of contemporary television and movie art, that is, film and TV dramas that adapted from novels published during 1900-1949. This thesis focuses on those writers whose novels were adapted to TV dramas. The study will lead to discussion on spread and accept of modern Chinese literature. The thesis is also a study on writers themselves and novels.The thesis consists five parts.Introduction. This part is an overview of the background of modern Chinese literature and its specific way of spread in contemporary mass communication environment. Firstly, the author demonstrates the relationship between mass media and the modern literature. The modern Chinese literature is deferent from classic Chinese literature in that the technology of publishing. The booming of Chinese modern literature, to a great extent, due to the booming of mass media with modern newspapers in particular. The modern publishing technology and newspapers enhanced and made it convenient to publish novels. Meanwhile, it helped to make writing a professional job, and brought about changes in literature ideology and way of writing. In addition, it caused changes in literature content and linguistic style. Secondly, the author approaches the relationship between contemporary TV drama art and the re-spread of modern literature. The spread of modern Chinese literature in contemporary environment is through various ways. In addition to spread by print media, TV drama version is a critical and popular way of spread. This kind of spread, on the one hand, widen the audience circle and enhance the impact of literature, and on the other hand, it inevitably causes changes of original text. However, the spread of Chinese modern literature by TV revalued the modern literature in contemporary culture context.Chapter One From the perspective of age and region, the author gives a full review of TV drama and movies adapted from Chinese modern literature. It sorts out history of modern literature adaptation in different ages and different circumstances. Then, it revalued the modern literature according to its contemporary spread and accept..TV and movie art is a kind of specific area of ideology. It is necessary to observe it on the basis of the whole social-cultural environment in which it stems from. Study on transformation of modernliterature should take the same way. During the so-called "seventeen years", China domestic TV and film developed in the politics-dominated social-cultural environment, while the so-called "new period" (end of 1970's and 1980's) featured Chinese TV and movie with characteristics of both authoritarian political regime and market economy in terms of "socialism with Chinese character". It is impossible to understand Chinese domestic TV and film without understanding its background, as a critic pointed out: what is important is not the year they talked about but the year when they talked.The social-cultural environment is different not only by ages but also by regions and the regional feature reflected in TV programs with the TV drama in particular. From early 1980's, a so-called "four level-run- television" policy has been carried out in China, which gave impetus to governments from four levels--central government, provincial government, city government and county government--to set up television stations by their own financial support. This policy inevitably leads to local television stations' choice to serve local interest first and adopt market-oriented routine. As TV dramas are concerned, local writers or those related writers' novels are the first choice when TV stations produce modern Chinese literature- based TV dramas.The second chapter: Classics on screen...