Study On The New-perceptional School From The Angle Of Modernism

This dissertation aims at the investigation of the literary creation of the New-perceptional school in 1920s and 1930s and its revelation and impact upon the urban literature of China. The school of New-perception is a genre of urban novel that receives the greatest influence from Western Modernism, that transfers the destructive effect of modern industrial civilization towards the harmony of the man himself., and that reveals the feelings of loneliness, ridiculousness and frustration of the man in the process of urban modernization, as well as the morbidness and monstrosity of urbanite driven by the modern life. Due to the double-identity of urbanites and free intellectuals of the New-perceptional writers, it is a natural thing for them to combine the consumerist ideology developed in market-oriented economy with the innate elite culture of intellectuals.This dissertation lays emphasis upon the urban literature characteristics of the school of New-perception and its pursuit of Modernism and also expounds its distinctive modern literary aestheticism as well as the reformation and innovation in styles. Meanwhile, taking "Modernism" as the underlying clue, this dissertation makes a comparison among the creation of the school of New-perception, Leftist urban literature, and the desire-oriented writing of the 1970s writers, with the intention to identify their similarities and differences.The dissertation consists of five chapters.The first chapter analyzes the urban literature characteristics and the pursuit of Modernism of the school of New-perception. Modern cities provide rich materials and new experiences for the New-perceptional writers and cultivate their urban consciousness which offer them various kinds of urban imagination and unique perception. Such consciousness enables them to observe and depict the city life, and to represent the conscious pursuit of urban literature which highlights their distinctiv(?) urban literature characteristics.With the intention of a further understanding of the urban literature characteristics of the school of New-perception , this chapter starts from the angle of the relationship between the city and the man, namely, the relationship between the New-perceptional writers and the cities, to investigate such aspects like the establishment of the New-perceptional writers ' urban identities and their cultural imagination and the expressions about the cities , also to explore the spiritual connections between the New-perceptional writers and the modern cities, especially the complicated connections in Shanghai from 1920s to 1930s. In a further way, this chapter gives a perspective and modern reflection on a comparative and spiritual level about the significance of the urban literature and the losses of the New-perceptional writings, so as to acquire a clear understanding and grasp the essence of the writings of the urban literature by the school of the New-perception.The second chapter discusses the modern literary aestheticism of the school of the New-perception. The New-perceptional writers realize their novels' modern aestheticism through their distinctive tendency of pursuing for the grotesqueness, the novelty and the differences, as well as their lively consciousness of examining the ugly, their visual angle of modern introversive aesthetic taste, and their modern artistic understanding. The modernist tendency of the novels of the school of the New-perception serves as a successful experiment for the modernization of Chinese novels and the Chinese typed modern art. In the aesthetic view, the New-perceptional writers abandon the one-fold perspective of external focus and expand their vision into human's interior world and internal aesthetic field. By investigating both the subjective and the objective aesthetic worlds, with the subjective as the dominating one, the objective the supplementing one, the New-perceptional writers achieve the unification of the two and greatly widen their literary vision, thus open a new aesthetic space for novel creation. It is observed that the New-perceptional writers have made early experiments on various artistic skills which demonstrate its richness in modern aestheticism.The third chapter discusses the interaction and alienation between the New-perceptional works and Leftist literature. In the literary world of China in 1920s and 1930s , there co-existed two kinds of literature: the modern New-perceptional works and the "red" classical Leftist literature. They intermingled and melted into each other in many aspects as varied as in subject matters and art forms. Above all, both of them appeared under the same historical and cultural backgrounds. They emerged from the same age of the late 1920s. After the failure of the Second Inner-revolutionary War in China, the intellectuals of petty bourgeoisie who were with the tendency of revolution divided into two groups under the high-handedness of Kuomintang: some of them continued with their revolutionary cause and became the main body of Leftist writers; some others, the New-perceptional ones, became discouraged and closed themselves into the narrow tower of art. Through the comparison, the dissertation offers a mastery of the relationship between the two under a grand context and identifies that the Leftist literature and New-perceptional writings are closely connected with each other for the same social and historical surroundings they share together. Practically, the Leftist writers make use of many modernist techniques in order to enhance the communicative effect and connotative significance.The amalgamation of New-perceptional writings and Leftist literature not only manifests itself in the capture of urban modernity, the exhibition of the social reality oi class antagonism and the pursuits of the quality of vanguard, but also in the interpenetration in literary expressional forms and techniques. Today when we analyze the relationship between the two, we found that they are not in confrontation, but assimilate each other: New-perceptional writings open up a new art field due to the influence of Leftist literature; Leftist literature acquires the depth of depiction of humanity because of the permeation of New-perceptional writings.Through comparing the two kinds of literature, this chapter gives a summary of the relationship of their variance, and arranges it in the way of linearity: the creative patterns of New-perceptional writings follow desire and recall-city life-urban depression; while Leftist literature follows political inquisition-proletariat-class struggle. In the process of literary establishment of the urban image of Shanghai, it is fulfilled by the mutual efforts of Leftist novels and New-perceptional novels. To study the urban image of Shanghai, one must consider both Leftist and New-perceptional literature. The absence of any one of them would be an imperfection.The fourth chapter is devoted to a comparison between New-perceptional writings and novels by Zhang Ailing and Mao Dun. The world of New-perceptional writers is sealed tightly within the horizon of secularity. And the desires expressed are mostly held down by earthly issues. There is no sign of their yearnings for the transcendental sacred values, nor eruption of the irrational stream of life. The ideologies behind their narrative scheme are conservative and closed rather than radical, though they are sort of innovative in terms of artistic form and aesthetic tastes.The everyday life delineated by Zhang Ailing is more than a state of life for it takes on an ontological connotation. She upholds a philosophy of her own, which is rooted in the earthling, and depicts the strenuous struggles of men in the battle of the world of upheavals. Literature is sublimated into a philosophy in her works and becomes a vehicle of a certain ideology. No doubt, Mao Dun's works capture a broader social prospect than those in the New-perceptional writings. It is a colorful panorama of socio-political life. The rational analysis of sociology by Mao Dun lends insights and penetrability to his descriptions of the urban life. When rationally reconfigured and analyzed from a sociological approach, the urban ecology that was originally miscellaneous looks much neater and clearer now, highlighting the kernel of the urban culture.The fifth chapter analyzes the relationship between the New-perceptional literature and the desire-oriented writings of the 1970s. All the novels written by the two groups against a background of consumerist culture depict the emotional desires and intricacy of urban dwellers. They refuse to shoulder the social responsibilities like building a mighty nation, but try to overthrow the mainstream ideology and the culture of the elite. So the literature has to retreat to the margin of the society and does something in its power, namely, to furnish the people's living in a consumerist society with an imagined space for mental fulfillments by means of personalized style of language signs.In the works of the New-perceptional writers and the 1970s writers, urban images are a special location, or to be more exact, one for consumption. The path leading to the hero's disillusionment, his loneliness, and his survival crisis are unraveled fictionally on the tip of their pen by means of such cultural codes as discotheques and bars. Clothed in modern civilization and covered by the darkness, human emotions and souls are experiencing dramatic changes and are represented faithfully or exaggeratedly in modern urban novels, resulting into grandiose and heart-quaking ways of expression to vent their passions.The novels are pervaded with a lasting sense of tragedy and end with the hero's passion and desire unfulfilled. More importantly, these novels are strongly critical of modern civilization while stress expressiveness of human desires. The men-women games depicted by the New-perceptional writers and the 1970s writers are not only the representation of how the characters pursue what their desire but also a cultural phenomenon pertaining to a certain developmental stage of our society.The historical process of modernization in China is inevitable. In such a time when urbanization and secular market economy prevail, the problem we confront with about urban novels is not simply acceptance or rejection, but how to glorify and develop the characteristics of urban literature in new historical context, and how to response to the call of the age to form a kind of urban novel which is enriched in distinctive national features and contemporary characteristics.