Literature Award And Contemporary Literature

Known as the first literary offprint in China, Novel Monthly started its publication in January 1980 and celebrated its 35 th anniversary early this year. It has not only witnessed the prosperity of Chinese literature in the new period, but encountered difficulties in the years swept by the market economy. It had been always sticking to the reader-centered principle through its untiring pursuit when literary periodicals in China went through peaks as well as troughs.Established by Novel Monthly in 1984, “Hundred Flowers Award” was the first national literature award based on readers’ votes and till now has been held for fifteen sessions. Its stability that the award has never been interrupted for thirty years and authority highly recognized in both the literary circles and the society are the main reasons why the literary creators and disseminators value this award so much. The involvement of the public has greatly strengthened the role of the readers in the contemporary literary arena, highly improved the relations among the literary creators, disseminators and recipients, and actively conformed to the trend of the times. In the meantime, the fact that such an award has won great attention from all walks of life also reflects the living state of "pure literature" in the market economy.This paper is divided into four chapters. Chapter One first introduces the story of Novel Monthly, the establishment and development of the “Hundred Flowers Award", and then, through a winner’s case in "Hundred Flowers Award", illustrates the impact of literature awards on the literary world and discusses the criteria of the award selection. By analyzing the fluctuation of the number of original novels selected from literary periodicals in the award-winning works in “Hundred Flowers Award”, the second chapter illustrates the living state of “pure literature” and its adjustments made in accordance with different situations, with examples of the switched-on October, the capricious Beijing literature and the renascent Novelist. The third chapter firstly examines the participation of the public in the process of “Hundred Flowers Award” selection in order to show how much the contemporary writers value the readers, and then discusses the roles that the editor award and the reader award play in the literary circles. The fourth chapter shows how the works winning the "Hundred Flowers Award" were re-circulated, edited and printed as volumes and adapted into films, and focuses on some disputes revolving about novel adaptation in the new media era.This paper displays the relationship among the contemporary literary production, dissemination, and evaluation with the example of "Hundred Flowers Award" of Novel Monthly. The selection of the "Hundred Flowers Award" is not only the product of the market economy, but also the evaluation of the aesthetic values of the contemporary readers. Taking it as the starting point, the paper explores the influence of cultural policies on the literature market, the effect of readers’ interests and preference on the writers’ creation, as well as the problems in the development of the literary market in China.