On The Characteristics Of Postmodernism In New Historical Novels

As one important phenomenon of contemporary Chinese literature, new historical novels have always been an important research subject to many different experts and scholars from various fields of study. The current consensus in this research field is that the new historical novels movement was influenced by Western cultural thoughts ever since the movement began; in other words, the emergence of this movement drew its lessons and experiences from Western cultural thoughts. “Just as modern Western society has entered a post-industrialization phase; modern Western culture has also undergone many times of the fission process which led to the wholly advancement to the post-modern age." This type of foreign influence enabled new historical novels to gradually ascend onto the arena of history and took the dominant position over traditional novels that are diminishing. Based on this view, post-modernism is without a doubt the theory that has the closest ties with new historical novels. However, any era ought to have its corresponding literature styles. Thus, under the influence of foreign cultures, the occurrence of new historical novels is the result of the join forces of foreign culture’s influence and literature’s inevitable tendency of self-evolvement. Therefore, this paper intends to have the characteristics of post-modernism reflected in new historical novels as the research object; using the research method of comparative studies, the paper will compare and contrast the two from many perspectives through late twentieth century writers’ sublation and drawing of lessons from Western culture’s spirits; the author will examine what are contemporary Chinese novels’ take in facing foreign thoughts and cultures among world’s cultural exchanges and interactions.This paper is divided into three parts. The first part mainly sets forth the core connotation of post-modernism essence in new historical novels, it addresses the pervasion of Western post-modernism elements in new historical novels of the late twentieth century from three different viewpoints: culture subversion, history dispelling, and human nature. Combined with relevant text analysis on how Chinese writers apply Western post-modern elements to allegorically refract the cultural context at that particular time among traditional historical topics-based novels, which have made the literature works of history genres in the early 1990’s to appear in an irrefutable post-modern writing style in regard to their essential implication. The second part mainly elaborates on post-modernism’s artistic characteristics expressed in new historical novels, it discusses how Chinese writers re-examine Chinese history by absorbing and drawing lessons from Western pluralistic writing concepts as they work on their own historical novels in three different aspects: narrative strategy, writing techniques, and language styles; thereby presenting the symbolization of post-modernism artistry in the texts of their new historical novels. The third part mainly probes into the mutation of new historical novels under post-modern context. It introduces the uniqueness of new historical novels’ development in accordance with their self-regulations under the influence of post-modernism thoughts in two aspects: the selection within rejection and the transformation within acknowledgement. Although the influx of post-modern thoughts has provided literary works with much convenience; but because of China’s deep-rooted cultural traditions and conservative cultural contexts, the writers involuntarily mutate these thoughts and sometimes even sublate them in their literary works. In relative to the doctrine of merely “take it as it is”, this is without a doubt an improvement. Through the comprehensive analysis from these three angles, the author will emphatically look into the inter-relationships between new historical novels and post-modernism as well as their outward extensions and thus instigate relevant thinking on this subject.In the discourse of this paper, the author will avoid the attempt to explore the relationship between the two entities in regard to new historical novels’ unilateral “catering to” or “resisting to” stance towards post-modernism. Instead, the author will follow the principles of objectivity and truthfulness to conduct comprehensive analysis on the emerging creativity and rebellion of contemporary new historical novels to traditional novels under the influence of Western thoughts, as well as the limitations of new historical novels’ drawing of lessons from traditional novels. All of these efforts are for the purpose of striving to explore the many possibilities of literary development from multidimensional perspectives.