The Road Of The Professionalization Of Literary Creation In The Media Ecology Vision

In the late Qing Dynasty, Chinese society was under turbulent chaos and theculture was greatly changing. Together with the western colonial invasion and culturalexpansion, the advanced printing technology and modern publishing media such asnewspaper not only opened wide discourse space for the late Qing Dynasty andtraditional Chinese men of letters, but also brought all kinds of new possibilities. Thecreating and spreading of literature, the literary figures’ lifestyle, writers’ thoughtpatterns, readers’ receiving modes and cultural consumption methods, etc, got thechance to transit from the traditional track to modernity, due to the appearance ofmodern press publishing media. The emergence of the modern press publishing mediaconstructed a new mechanism of literary production and circulation, which liberatedliterature from the aristocratic privilege. Furthermore, the new medium not onlyprovided the traditional men of letters with totally new occupational choices, but alsocleared a path to get rid of the bondage of feudalism and to change into independent,self-employed and modern intellectuals, which enabled literary creation to become aprofession.Under the historic and literary context of the late Qing Dynasty, throughreviewing and presenting the professionalization of newspapermen, novelists andwriters in the late Qing Dynasty, this thesis investigates the novelists’ change inidentity under the influence of the new press medium, and its impact on literature andcultural pattern; presents the emergence of Chinese writers as professionals, theprofessionalization of traditional men of letters from the Confucius scholars to masscultural producers, as well as their spiritual world and cultural significance in the newliving conditions; exposes the mutual and symbiotic relationships between medium,culture and human beings communication.The thesis mainly includes the following parts:Introduction Part chiefly introduces the research situation, research aim andsignificance of the topic as well as the definitions of relative words in the paper.Chapter One, approaching from such three aspects as medium changing andliterary developing, literary spreading’s subject identity, light literature represented bynovels, systematically presents the creation, existing form, content and spreading medium under the ancient medium circumstancesChapter Two, taking the literary group who had reporting experience andtranslated or created novels during the1840-1894as researching subject, analyzeswhat kind of spirit and literary significance these literary figures possessed whenfacing new existing situation under the late Qing historical context, and literaryfigures’ position and historical function in the early period of the writers’professionalization.Chapter Three focuses on the forming of the new medium, the updating of thecultural spreading subject, the advocating of promoting novels’ position and thedemonstration of creating novels, in order to show the forming of the new literaryspreading medium and how the new medium prepared well for literature’s moderntransformation, marketization of literary production and circulation,professionalization of literary creation from technology, social environment, ideologyand practice subject.In Chapter Four, according to author’s survey, from the end of1902to1903,modern press, by providing the means of mass communication, took place of thetraditional Chinese literary figures’ communication, that is, the small-group spreadingpattern, and totally changed the traditional literature’s operating mechanism andliterary spreading medium. The professionalization of writing started from theprofessionalization of novels. The prosperity of novel creation and the appearance ofprofessional writers started from the political elites advocating of novels. This chapterfirstly states the newsman’s theory and literary creation, and then classifies them intofour types, co-translation, self-translation, self-creation and compounding, andanalyzes the representative figures of each type.In the Conclusion Part, the author puts forward that the multi-press medium is aspecial product in the late Qing Dynasty, which is of great significance to Chinesetraditional men of letters, and the professionalization of writers is a revolution inChinese literary development as well as an outcome of the Chinese literary spreadingmedium development.