Transformation Of Folktales: A Traditional Way Of Reconstruction And Limitation

Story about Not Being Afraid of Ghosts( "Story"), a book edited in 1960 s, is a selection of folktales recorded historically in Chinese sketch stories. The book not only served as an instrument of the propaganda of certain ideology, but also reconstruction of tradition methods of utilizing textual folktales to construct government-driven ideology and practice rubrics. As the model to make the past serve the present, the “story” provides it a mode of discourse by treating reactionaries and difficulties as ghost to denounce and propagandizes the Marxist proletarian revolutionary values. The stories in the book are shaped to parables including the experiences of ancient people conflicting with their enemies. By comparing with individual-collected folktales, it is discovered that the methods undertaken by "Story" : reforming texts and constructing meanings, are a process of decontextualization and re-contextualization. In the context of individual-collected folktales, there existed a textual practice of communication between editors and readers because of the fixed discourse of the folktale’s texts. Whereas, in the context of "Story", the textual practice was transformed into a brand new one by the reformed texts. It is means that the action, which readers can hold free conversations with the authors through those stories of opening meanings, become to a passive action that readers have to receive the official guiding ideology by interpreting the normative significances in the preface and explanatory notes in the “Story” from the context of individual-collected folklores to the book’s context. So, the reform and utilization of folktales deviated from methods of reading on practical level. Therefore, regarding of "Story" solely, the reconstruction of tradition method was not able to function as editors anticipated.