Persistent Avant-guard

Yu Hua is acknowledged as the most talented and unique avant-guard writer. He immediately caught the attention of the critics when his works came out. And his later works won even more credits among the people. He serially made violent, tormenting, and gloomy vision in his narration, and at the same time he constantly altered the narrative strategy, whereby he put some defamiliarizing elements to the critic field and aroused some difficulties in illustration. In recent years, Yu Hua devotes his effort mainly to the writing of essays, from which we can note his unique understanding about literature. However, critics share different opinions upon his changes Yu Hua made in his works since 1990s. Some critics hold that he has retreated from the avant-guard to the realism. This piece of thesis by probing into the concept of "avant-guard" and analyzing his works of different phases, tries to demonstrate that Yu Hua is a persistent avant-guard writer and he makes great contribution to modem Chinese literature.This paper consists of five main parts. Part one: redefinition of avant-guard. Introduce the realistic meaning of avant-guard from the explanation of word in the dictionary, declaring that it is the constantly-altering definition with the development of our times. Its main characteristic is the differentiation of the thoughts and the avantness of the arts, and it points out the direction of the literary development. Avant-guard needs to be understood from a wide range, because thetraditional Chinese avant-guard had lost their pioneering position with formula writing. But Yu Hua never stops his writing, so he is true avant-guard.Part two: the historical emergence of Yu Hua and his two leaps. The early works of Yu Hua is natural and beautiful, revealing no avant-guard feature. From his self-review, we note that he is not satisfied with the current situation at that time. Mid-80s is Yu Hua's first turning-point for the publication of his first novel with the significance of avant-guard exploration Leaving Home at 18. Then Yu Hua published several "classical" avant-guard fictions, and accomplished the theoretical exploration of avant-guard of this period. "The Hypocritical Works" systematically explaining his thinking upon "realness" aroused great discussion in the literary field. In the 90s, he successively published three long fictions -- Calling In The Drizzle, Live, Xu San Watching Blood-Selling, which represent his breakthrough in writing experience and writing theory and which realized his second promotion.Part three: analysis of the pioneering feature in Yu Hua's literary writing. First of all, analyze his feature represented in the first promotion, which is in contrast with the traditional fictions, indicating the common features of all the avant-guard writers and Yu Hua's unique feature, particularly his thinking and technical exploration on "realness." Then demonstrate the poineering feature in the second leap, declaring that Yu Hua's works lost the entertaining flavor due to his extreme craving for theory and form, and it leads to unpopularity of his works; since 1990s, he transmitted the center of his fictions to the thinking of the real human life, which does not mean he dropped his characteristic, instead it justsignifies that he transcended himself into a higher literary position. Part four: the contribution and revelation of Yu Hua's fictions. It is divided into three sections. Section one: the significance to avant-guard fiction. Although avant-guard fiction made great success, it is not flawless. However, Yu Hua found an approach acceptable to his readers and also accessible to his writing ideal. Yu Hua put some new ideas to his later works. To study from the perspective of the thesis, we can draw that the success of Yu Hua gives us the hope to see the avant-guard fiction out of difficulty. Section two: the contribution Yu Hua made to the modern literary world. It is explained in two respects: his thinking about "realness" and the reason why his works are widely accepted. Section thre...