Sites: A Contesting Field For Signs

An important but covert cause for varied deficiencies and deterioration of contemporary Chinese literary texts is that the internal structure of literary history and literary texts has been undermined since the War of Resistance Against Japan (1937-1945).The decay of the internal structure seems to be closely related with sites. This relation involves discussions on a serial of questions including the relationship between literature and sites,the representation of sites for meaning,the trend of Chinese modern literature and the important role of sites in modern literature.The present dissertation roughly divides Chinese modern literature into three phases:from the beginning of New Literature to pre-war,in-war and post-war(the War of Resistance Against Japan).The three phases to a large extent correspond to three different but correlated states:steady,broken and confused,all of which exist in Chinese modern literary works,in the internal structures of literature and in literary history.The change of the representation of sites is assumed to be the cause of the three states.Though,in previous studies on the relationship between sites and literature,the role of sites obtains concerns,there lacks attempts to correspond sites to the developmental processing of literary texts.In a word,the role of sites should have deserved more concerns in relevant studies.Sites,a concept attracting many interests in culture,play such an important role in the developmental processing of modern literary texts.Therefore,sites need to be investigated further on the basis of the existing studies.This dissertation focuses on the study of a case that involves the meaning of relating Beibei(relocation site of the provisional capital Chongqing in the War of Resistance Against Japan) to Lao Shaw's literary works Lao Shaw's literary works.The profound analysis of correlation between the site and Lao Shaw's works in this dissertation demonstrates,that in the War of Resistance Against Japan,the literary texts were broken for the influence and change of sites.The analysis of the case provides a pattern for the accesses to such breaking and its manifestation,and additionally it provides inspiration for similar case studies that may form a system.In that case,the covert role of site is expected to be revealed in literature and implies the trend of modern literature.Such analysis also suggests the most rational cause for the deterioration of literal texts and looks for meaningful remedies.Case study in literary research is often questioned for its reliability,but the approach inspires the studies in similar situations and motivates question thinking.Therefore,case study is an appropriate approach for the present research.The author hopes to motivate the reflection on the importance of sites in Chinese 20^th century literature in a new perspective attempted in the present research.