Research On Officialdom Novels Since The New Period

In the research on China’s contemporary narrative literature, officialdom novel is often undervalued. However, whether in the perspective of history, aesthetics, ideology or in cultural production, the officialdom novel since the new period dazzle people’s eyes with its continuous power and complex dimension:officialdom novel represents a period of transition from literature after the Cultural Revolution to modern literature; moreover, its emergence and people’s undervaluation of it become an inalienable part of the modernity of China’s literature. Based on the analysis of existing academic results, this essay clarifies the concept and academic questions relating to "officialdom novels". It divides the themes of officialdom novels since the new period into four types, namely the theme of reform, the theme of anticorruption, novels of native style and the theme of condemnation. On the basis of modernity theory and with the combination of sociology and culturology, the author attempts to break the boundaries of ancient and modern times, highbrow and popular works and realism and romance in researching officialdom novels. With the in-depth exploration of certain questions contained in them, such as the social appeal, the aesthetic pursuit and the mirror image of power, the author also digs into the ontological connotation of political novels and analyzes the regular patterns followed by the transformation of different types, which further provides a special angle for reevaluating the literary value of political novels and their status on literary history.This essay is separated into seven parts.The introduction briefs the literary value and importance of officialdom novels’ thriving. Because of the spreading problems lie in our current researches such as obsolete research methods and rigid application of western theory, officialdom novel researches tend to be far away from reality, converging and superficial. Thus this essay combines modernity theory and typological analysis in a new angle, at the same time comprehensively and objectively evaluates the literary value and the historical significance of officialdom novels since the new period by referring the methods of sociology and culturology.The second part comprehensively analyzes the historical and cultural reasons of the upsurge of officialdom novels, strictly clarifies the concepts and academic questions of "officialdom novel" in the view of historical development, discriminates the historical changing and connotation of officialdom novel in an aspect of modernity, further expounds that the officialdom novels since the new period is a choice made by the combination of politics and literature under a new political condition. At the same time, the a hundred year history of officialdom novels provide us an opportunity to deeply probe into the complex adaptive relationship among the original historical drive, tradition of China, western influences and current social situation. This essay divides the themes of officialdom novels since the new period into four types, namely the theme of reform, the theme of anticorruption, novels of native style and the theme of condemnation. The four types of officialdom novels reveals the process of Chinese literature regaining modernity, and respectively represents the critical thinking and exploration of narrative mode in relation to the four dimensions of literary modernity-truth, justice, desire and the scope of value.The third part emphasizes on the analysis of writers’ enthusiasm in writing reform fictions due to the appeal of major historical transformations in our national policies in the end of1970s. Besides, the government encouraged this style of writing in various ways. Therefore fiction novels took the lead in that period and gained a unique status. Officialdom novels on the theme of reform reuse the method of socialist realism, write brilliant plots and happy endings, and shape the image of heroes emerging in the starting age of reform, containing rich contemporary culture, modern value and significant meaning in the history of literature:these novels are a kind of socialist reeducation and enlightenment to the general public. It shows us how officialdom novels regains the dimension of "truth" in the modernity exemplified by "the May4th" Movement. Its shortcomings are also explicated:it is a herald of imagination and compulsory possession of history and truth. The story it told us actually is a story of the necessary realization of the ideal nation of socialist, which is foretold by Marxism—the quintessence of sciences, although it abandoned the present, bridging the past directly to the future.The fourth part focuses on analyzing the emergence of officialdom novels on the theme of anticorruption in the collision of modernism. These novels appear on the call of anti-corruption and upholding integrity by the central government and with the protection of national policies. Different from the officialdom novels appeared almost at the same time, which are highly controversial, anti-corruption theme novels, with the images of upright officials they created, fit the aesthetic expectations of readers and the policy made by the government. Anti-corruption novels frequently win the awards set by national governments and sell well in the book market. They become the promising main stream novels supported by both the government and the general public. We should recognize that anti-corruption novels are a group of writers’response to the stern social problem of corruption with their literary works. These writers are full of sense of justice, sense of mission and sense of responsibility. They try to record and express the course of China’s anti-corruption and the expectation, understanding and retrospection of writers and the general public towards it. In this process of representation, grandiose narration’s bridge to the crisis of legality, the hardships of reform and anti-corruption between the crevice of rule of man and rule of law, and people’s aspiration of justice and order are inevitably and imaginatively created in the in-depth narration of the novels, becoming the proof of official power’s supremacy. It is the lagging and dislocated anxiety and confusion brought by the heaviness of the "body" in political transformations. The anxiety and confusion proves the bravado of justice in the current period.The fifth part scrutinizes the emergence of officialdom novel, its narrative ethics, aesthetic characteristics and modern significance. Officialdom novels are considered to have exposed too many negative aspects, unacknowledged by the main stream ideology. However, with the support of cultural industrialization and the commercial culture, these novels thrive against the general opinion, ranking high on various lists of best sellers. It uses the style which is similar to the technique of Chinese paintings and the methods of irony, renders the officialdom, anxiety of power and the corruption of intellectuals’souls with meticulous care and flawless artistry. Exquisite in artistry, officialdom novel looks indifferent, but leaves the readers with an agreeable impression. What is more important is that officialdom novel demonstrates to the world how it, by using literary imagination, sketches the boundary and scope of different desires in real life, including the desire on power, money, love and sex, etc. People (not only the officials) never stops in the realization of their desires—from politics to lust, from morality to business. What officialdom novels depict can be rated as a paradise lost of politics. In the maze of desire created by writers, desire is legalized spontaneously, unconsciously suspending value and systemizing political desire and desiring politics. In the sixth part, the author expounds that in the information age when the internet came into being and mass media widespread, officialdom novels gain new narrative elements which are quite different from the past, full of elements such as gamification, desire and fragmentization and fashionable and surreal narrative techniques. Like the condemnation novels in the late Qing Dynasty, these novels present a dramatic impulse in the form of a carnival. That is why they are called new condemnation novels.The process of writing and the core of narration are a carnival of axiology, which reflects the queer situation that in the current times, when traditional values collapse and a real scientific, free and democratic awareness in modern meaning does not form, all the components of a society reduced to consumer goods. Besides, though it is based on the violent collapse and subversion of values, in an opposite dimension, it is a strategy used by new condemnation novels to communicate with the modern society, value being its symbol and dissembling being its methods, providing an absurd and recreating choice of modernity different from the tradition of "obsession with China in misery" in the May4th Movement period.The conclusion summarizes officialdom novel’s literary value and its significance in the history of literature. The author thinks political novels sharpen four connected theoretical propositions relating to the officialdom novels since the new period: rebuilding the political dimension of literary rules, regaining modernity, reestablishing the social responsibility of literature, and how literature reflecting reality. These four propositions are connected and linked with each other. Together, they clarify confusion and show the new period officialdom novels’trace and the establishment their status and value in the history of literature and culture in the last thirty years, This may lead contemporary novels to enter a new platform where different voices can be heard. Besides, with their writing achievements, they can reveal the experience and disadvantages of political novels as categorized novels in their writing, providing a possible and general significance for future writings.