Research On Family's Different Versions In The View Of Generalized Rhetoric

BaiJin is one of the most important writers in the Chinese modern and contemporary literature history and one of the most influential writers since the New Culture Movement. As his masterpiece, The Family marks the beginning of his serial novels based on the theme of the old family life. The writer has revised the work several times since its publication, with different intentions each time. Thus the changes in different versions reflect different core orientations, providing a new perspective for the rhetorical study of the novel.This article focuses on the three editions of the novel The Family following the "single-track linear contrast" method. It compares the original edition with the anthology version, and then the anthology version with the complete version. Through the detailed reading and exhaustive calculation of the changes in the three versions, the core orientation of these changes is excavated, which paves the way for investigating the influence of the changes on the rhetorical reconstruction of the text and the rhetorical significance of the narrative alternations in the broad sense.The article approaches the changes from the perspective of the narrative roles, taking the "positive roles" of the "revolutionary youth" and "working people" as well as the "negative roles" of the "autocratic parents" and "feudal accomplice". The adaptation of the key incidents sheds light on the purpose of the narrative variations and the core orientation of the rhetoric reconstruction. Meanwhile, analyses of the rhetoric reconstruction strategies contribute to the exploration of adaptive patterns while research of the prefaces and postscripts helps in finding the difference between contextual reconstruction and author's interpretation, revealing the demand for alteration.