The Study Of Buddhist Cultural Prototypes In Zhang Henshui’s Novels

Zhang Henshui,whose works have been welcomed by the broad masses of the people,is the master of modern light literature.The theme of his works covers peacefully and elegantly romance and patriotic serious literature such as Counter-Japanese War.From novel,prose to newspaper reviews,all kinds of works can be created by Zhang.Readers can realize the pluralism and richness throughout from his great works.The producing process and life experiences of Zhang contain the heart of Chinese traditional Confucianism,Buddhism and Taoism.To be more exact,the Buddhism influences Zhang the most and the variety of his works take Buddhist stories as their prototypes.This paper quotes Frye’s Archetypal Criticism and Carol Jung’s Category of the Unconsciousness Collective,supplemented with the Modern Western Narratology and Chinese traditional mysteries,taking Buddhist stories as the breakthrough points,explaining the Buddhism and creeds from his works.By doing this,we can testify Zhang’s motives and theoretical basis and try to uncover his life belief and working principle,thus disclosing its deeply cultural factors from purely textual deconstruction and analysis of plots.Also,from this,we can explain why Zhang Henshui and his works have the great influence on the modern literature.This paper tries to discuss Zhang’s Buddhist prototypes of his works from the following four aspects:Feast of all souls is the miserable prototype in Zhang’s romantic narratives.The stories like the romance between the spider and flower in Buddhism contain the miserable narrative pattern which is about Primary afflictions.This kind of pattern appears widely in Zhang’s romantic narrative which means if you want to fulfill your life,the only thing you should do is to grasp the precepts of abstinence in order to go into the meditation situation.Lotus flower is the merciful prototype in Zhang’s works about human nature.This flower is a classical image of Buddha,which not only represents benevolence in the Buddhism,but also the females,including The Lotus Sutra,Lotus lady,and Clavicle Bodhisattva.Jin Gangchu is the weapon symbolizing the power of wisdom,which is the prototype of secularism in Zhang’s Counter-Japanese War literature.There are mass of representativeness,Jin Gangchu,Kong Bodhi,Diamond Sutra taking place in Zhang’s Counter-Japanese War literature.Winning Buddha,which is the prototype of Monkey King has also been the important symbol of Zhang’s secularism.Crossing River is the prototype of meditation in Zhang’s satiric novel.The prototypes of Lethe,the way to the nether world,Tertiary stone,Meng Po soup and The other shore flower.Additionally,the metaphors towards crossing and no crossing are the Zhang’s reconsideration about human beings after experiencing the social unrest.The reason why Zhang Henshui achieved the great success in literature is that the way he shaped somebody’s characters and arranged the plots is unique.The emersion of Buddhist characters and Buddhist creeds is the inner psychological power in Zhang’s works.