| Since the very ancient time, Hunan province has been a region of literary inspiration, which embraces a long history of literature with the veins of letters. So far, tremendous great writers have given birth to countless immortal literary masterpieces. In the 21st century, Hunan writers also made a significant contribution to the development of contemporary Chinese literature, with their own lives, talent, efforts and various literary works. Therefore, it is of a giant significance to conduct a systemic and comprehensive summary of the achievement of Hunan novels in the 21st century. By observing its development trend, spiritual dimension, aesthetic characteristics and literary schools, we can further our study of the 21st century Hunan novels situation. It also carries a replaceable value for the revitalization of the Hunan Literature in the new century and serves as an important reference of cultural construction to aid the prosperity of the whole literary career.This thesis consists of introduction, main body and the surplus and the main body can be divided into seven chapters. The introduction studies the current novels situation in the 21st century of Hunan and elaborates the subject foundation, text framework and originality.The chapter one tries to bring the clarity into the context Interpretation of Hunan novels in the 21st century. It points out that it has laid a solid foundation by those pioneers for Hunan novels in the 21st century. There also exists an inter-generational trend, which goes well with the active guidance of the literary mainstream by the government. However, marketing-oriented wave, desire oriented context, thriving development of visual media plus the robust coverage of the internet media gave novels a great impact and shock. Hunan writers stick to the humanitarian spirit and keep a persistent pursuit for independent and individualism based novel composing, by which the officialdom novels, local country novels, intellectuals’novels, historical novel and internet novels have presented a prosperous view and landed a profound impact.The chapter two embodies an overall analysis on the spiritual dimension and intrinsic value of the 21st century Hunan novels. It holds a point that the deep sense of urgency, a strong will to live a man’s life and a vivid down to earth living spirit make up the main spiritual dimension of the 21st century Hunan novels. Meanwhile, those three aspects come to an organic unity, in which the deep concern about the underlying class people, a display of the secular life of plain people bring into a qualitative content to the spirit of urgency and in return, it ensure the display of the secular life will not fall into the vulgar style, keeping its proper spirit and aesthetic realm. Simple will to live enchants the down to earth living spirit with a vital energy of living sense, which will not be bound by hopeless life.The chapter three mainly focuses on the aesthetic characteristics of Hunan novels of the 21st century. Specifically, in the 21st century Hunan novels still keep a relatively distinctive regional scent, which are rich in various folk pictures. Within them, the most noteworthy elements are its witchcraft humanities and bandits’ image. At the same time, Hunan novels in 21st century exhibit a sharp realism literary trend. Hence, the exposure of political corruption and the officialdom drawbacks revealed plus the sincere concern about the countryside and farmers’fate, the living conditions of intellectuals indicate that Hunan writers dare face the contradictory of real life and its internal conflict and own the bravery to dig into the complexity, which reflects an authentic realistic stand ground. Meanwhile, Hunan novels always hold dear a kind of inexhaustible lingering of romantic spirit, which give out the trace in the environment setting, the fate of the plot and characters of novels as a concrete manifestation.The chapter four is brief observation on the current situation of Hunan officialdom novels in the 21st century. Considering the issue from the writers’team, the quantity and the quality of works, Hunan bureaucratic inside story narrative of the 21st century gives readers a splendid sight. These works not only uncover the facts of corruption and degeneration of public power field, but also bear a thorough description of humanity from the perspective of the normal bureaucracy running principle. But judging from the narrative tense employed by the narrators, their shortcomings and deficiencies also got nowhere to hide. The narrative voice unveils a sort of tolerable understanding, which can be traced back to the integration of the critical attitude and a vague stand point. It is so morally ambiguous for those cases. In addition to that, the most critical part might be the ambiguousness of the democratic consciousness and the lack of tragic spirit, which result in limitations on intensity of criticism and weakened aesthetic value.The chapter five is an interpretation of the 21st century Hunan local country novels. This thesis regards the local country novels as the major part of the 21 century Hunan novels. Among them, the narrators not only pay their due attention and care on all the changes in the waves of market economy, but also locate the focus on the record of the fading past. When they let the local countries perform their own tales, the texts outburst both the surging vitality of life from the earth in addition to the misery, misfortune, ignorance and maze of the country life. The blood vein goes through the lives and earth, bearing the identical spring of life and strength that bless human with inexhaustible source of life. While, the spiritual block and humanity maze function as the rival of the development of rural life and the free space of life......The chapter six mainly examines the 21st century Hunan novels of intellectuals’ narration. It states the point that although the 21st century Hunan Intellectuals’ narration still holds a deep concern about intellectuals’ anxiety, hesitation, and frustration. As time changes and the consideration of generational differences besides other reasons, Hunan writers tend to put intellectuals into the confusing values of pluralism and the surging tides of commodity economy in real life with a purpose to drive them to dive into the purgatory of living, suffering from the struggle and pursuit. Bureaucratic fields, business circles, the pursuit for secular life are their living ground, but they also stick to their own humanistic standpoint and spiritual free space, which put on very interesting show going in this way:the more they pursue the independence of spirit, the more they found themselves caught up in worldly quagmire. While they try badly to hold the humanistic ground, they choose an ambiguous treatment for the self-identification. That means, for them, the place to lay their base rocks of life, is still waiting to be charted by those explorers.The Chapter seven tries to conduct an evaluation to the 21st century Hunan historical novels. Under the influence of post-modernism trend, the previous historical narrative of Hunan seeks a way to unchain itself from the serious, lofty, grand and divine orientation, not only focusing on the underlying social classes characters’living condition and destiny, but gradually marching toward the dimension of individual history, the history of desire and the history based on the random or occasional changes. Meanwhile, the 21st century Hunan historical novels pay more attention to make inquiries to unique personality and spirit of people from the bottom social classes. Hunan province as a multi-ethnic region, the writers here give a due observation and exhibition to the racial history of Tujia and Miao, which, to a certain extent, makes up for the ignorance to the historical evolution of minorities in the history of Chinese mainstream development process.In the surplus, it aims to figure out the limitations and breakthrough points for the 21centry Hunan novels. Specifically speaking, Hunan novels have made great achievements in the 21st century. But there also exist many problems. The most critical issue is the restriction from the educational resources, reliance on the cultural spirit of local country region and the lack of breaking through from the stubbornness of the convention, which led to the ignorance to the richness of life and insights into real life experience. And the problem was also got uncovered that the literary scope has been a limitation to the Hunan writers. Hence, those who suffer from the lack of academic and artistic accumulation can hardly maintain a balanced mind to bear their literary career with calmness and leisure. It has a long way to go before it can reach the tranquility and macro scope of living. Meanwhile, Hunan novelist should also get rid of the reliance on the politic, market and tradition. They should strengthen the sense of a blazing artistic dedication and a pursuit chasing the more ambitious originality. |
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