Return To The Folk World

Civilian literature has been increasingly dominating since 1980s, in terms of quantity, acceptability of audience, and structure of social consciousness. Great attention and enthusiasm even come from theoreticians like Sihe Chen, who proposed the folk theory.This article focused on exploring the civilian literature after middle 1980s, including the new realistic and new historical novels after middle 80s, new civilian novels and those describing the life of civilians after 90s. Referring to the folk theory and depending on the folk culture, the study tried to probe the tendency of returning to the folk world and the values of folk culture on the textual surface and deep inside the literature.The concept of civilian literature was differentiated and analyzed first, with brief introduction to its variation. With that followed the emphasis of the paper, the analysis of the culture values from three perspectives: poetics; construct of daily life, material seeking under vulgarization, and the soaring of folk idealism. The idealism, expressed as the surviving belief and the freedom of life in the text, guided the writer of civilian literature to pursue the simplicity and originality of the folk world.The paper also reflected on the process of returning to the folk world in light of the attitudes possessed by different writers. The return brought a pure and fresh linguistic power, and a cultural paradox and deficits due to the negative side of the folk culture.