| The step of the new century is in such a hurry that five years have passed before we realized it. Much like a cicada extricating from its slough, Chinese contemporary literature, as well as China, is experiencing changes under globalization. In modern age, which takes the economic construction as the focus, the literature and intelligentsia of humanism can hardly escape from gradually being marginalized. When facing the decline of morality and value, however, Chinese Literature, which has always been caring about the national economy and the people's livelihood, should entrust with the historical mission of rescuing the nation. That is why this dissertation selected ZHANG Wei, the novelist who possesses the spirit of sacrifice and has got noticeable achievement in literature, as the research target. ZHANG is one of the most important novelists in contemporary times. The creative resources of his novels are not only rich but also deep, connecting quite a number of frontier issues in present literary research, and some literary critical works have sung high praise for his novels. However, the studies on ZHANG still need to be further, particularly on taking his creative thoughts as a whole, its inner logic, cultural suggestion, potential predicament, etc. Thus, by regarding the former researches as the foundation and employing social-historical method, cultural critique, psychological analysis and comparative way, this dissertation will study ZHANG and his novels as a unity from the aspects of diachronic thoughts, cultural philosophy and psychology. To be specific, the thesis will take the novelist and his works as an integer by putting them into the transformation of the society, its social-historical thoughts and culture context, by observing the novelist and his works from thoughts resources to the development, from the thematic diachronic evolvement to the synchronic cultural comparison, from the innate writing talents to the unavoidable psychological dilemma, and therefore, grasp the research object wholly. Tracing one's thinking origin has always been a significant methodology when studying a novelist, yet this has not appeared as expected in the already existed studies on ZHANG. The paper, accordingly, takes the aspect as one of the highlights and reveals the following origins in ZHANG's works: influence from the active element and benevolence of Confucian school, the perfect harmony between man and nature as well as the spirit of freedom borrowed from Taoism, the concept of enlightenment and reason from LU Xun, moral idealism and the mind of bearing bitterness from Russian Literature, leisured and uninhibited manner adopted from folk world, and the Western Philosophy that obtains the feature of "anxiety" and "despair". But, anyhow, the main creative inception of ZHANG's is oriented to Chinese traditional culture, and hence takes on a gesture of "nostalgia", meditating on the past. "Moral" is the stronghold in ZHANG's literary creation, judgment for the value, and the inner logic throughout all his books accordingly (from his earlier novel The Limpid Pool to the latest You are on the Plateau & the Western Suburb). Under the raging tide of the transformation of society, ZHANG maintains "idealism of morality", constructing his world of Utopia, advocating "cultural conservative", displays his "maintenance" to the traditional agricultural civilization and "rebuff" to the deformed industrial civilization (representative works such as Nostalgia & Reminiscence, Parable of September, etc.), approves the reasoning of value instead of implemental reasoning, and therefore pursues the possible resolution for a newly-built human society in the background of contradiction between post-modern "constructive" indication and traditional civilization (representative books such as Letters from other Province), consequently exhibiting two important basic creative thinking modes in ZHANG's novels: the contradictory between traditional agricultural civilization and the malformed industrial civilization, and t... |
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