A Study Of Chen Zhanmin’s Novels

This dissertation focuses on Chen Zhanmin’s Novels and studies them from three perspectives. First, this paper works on the misery theme and humanity reflection that have been expressed in these novels. Chen’s work carries on the tradition in Chinese new literature where people’s suffering and humanity saneness are concerned, and the misery theme and humanity reflection grow and develop in a gradual way. His earliest work Chenzhong tells about human’s cruelty and brutality in a closed and ignorant society as well as a failed redemption by those foresighted ones to wake up the public. In his following books, Chen puts man in the political and economic turbulence, and studies the damage on humanity from those two sides; while in the meantime, he also reveals value nihility under these glamorous facades and devalues the rash advance in China’s history. Based on this, Chen summarizes misery the theme and humanity reflection in all of his novels with Jiuquhuichang and, comes up with an approach to rebuilt value and regain humanity. Chen mentions in his novel that earthly suffering is due to divergence from the “prime motive”, and people must return to it to achieve redemption, namely, returning to the legendary sanity in ancient times. This redemption seems to be a look back on the past, however, the ancient sanity existed in mythological and immemorial age and there is no evidence in its record, so it’s nothing more than the writer’s beautiful anticipation of the future. The reason Chen pictured our past is that he never found a time in human’s history when the perfect humanity ever existed, therefore he uses his imagination of the unreachable past to indicate his expectation for the reachable future.Second, this thesis studies the history awareness and national allegory feature in Chen’s novels, organizes and identifies his historical settings with magical realism characteristics, his criticism and sarcasm against historical Utopia, and the “national allegory ” features in his work as “the third world literature”. Chen’s novels are filled with historical factors, they not only start from the overall history with a macroscopic view, but reproduce and reflect on the Utopia construction in China’s history and the current Utopian economy using metaphor and specific examples, besides, they imply the nihility in our history through unfinishable constructions, the individual’s sense of vainness and nihility. From this angle, the novels end up with an appeal for the new self and the new view on history.Third, this thesis focuses on the language arts of Chen Zhanmin’s Novels and studies them from three aspects. One is the use of code word makes the characteristics of implication and polysemy under the influence of Jiaodong dialect. Two is the structure of novels becomes Europeanized under the influence of foreign language; the extension of the narrative time and space and artistic characteristics from the change of complicated tenses. Three is the variety features of image combination by the effect of Chinese ancient poems and lyrics; specially, the novels make the long history time and space environment as a kind of image from the thought of image combination, which realize the arrangement of space and time and enrich the aesthetic connotation of novels.In the ending part, this thesis puts Chen Zhanmin under the cultural background of the 50 s born writers’ creation group based on his life experience. This paper analyzes the unique significance of his work and discusses the subjective causes of his novels which miss the mainstream discourse and a wider acceptance. Besides, this paper has pointed out the several faults that will diminish the artistic achievement in his writings and have a more comprehensive discussion about Chen Zhanmin’s Novels’ status and significance in contemporary Chinese literature.