The Narrative Is What Is? - The New Era Of Narrative Criticism

Out of the concern for the present research on narration, the paper thus makes the request, "At what is narration directed?"The late 1990s once witnessed a well-known literary trend called "Odd Writirg ",which caused great disturbance in the contemporary literary circle due to its unusual discourse pattern and aesthetic mode as well as the peculiar lifestyle embodied in the text. And this paper contributes much on the analysis of the representative of the trend, " Shang Hai Baby " , pointing out that it is an erotic text in that "sex " here is packed and sold in a literary disguise, thus a totally commercial act. But instead of discussing the legitimacy of the commercialized "sex" literature as aqainst a post-modernist background, the paper tends to explain why "sex " can break through some social taboos and comes to be the focus of narration. In fact, it is not a phenomenon exclusive to post modernism. Diachronically, we find that "sex" in most sensitive to social changes. When a social value system collapses, "sex" will first break loose the old moral restrictions, going along in a free way. And "Odd Writing" emerges just accordingly.Consequently, the paper makes a general survey of the literary tendency in the new era with the conclusion that the literary development in the past twenty years is nothing but a continuous process of destroying the existing value systems: It first in the mid and late 80s dissolves such discourses as transcendance, significance, value profundity ideals , and then denies the necessity of Being in the "zero" narration of the new realists.However when all meanings are deconstructed, narration will put attaion on the body.The spiritual crisis of the era is the background of "Odd Writing ", and decadence is its essence .