The Heritance And Variations Of Traditional Mouse Stories

This study focuses on the traditional Chinese stories of mouse. By making the evolution of mouse stories clearer, the law of the evolution can be found.The first chapter is divided into three parts: the reasons of topic choice, the studies of mouse stories, the theories and the methods applied in this study.The second chapter is the general description of the traditional mouse story.According to Aarne-Thompson classification system, traditional mouse stories contain fourteen story types. The image of mouse in Chinese traditional stories can be divided into three categories: mouse-deity, mouse-demon, mouse-person. The image of mouse-deity is related to folk religion and belief .The image of mouse- demon is the product of human inward fears and the image of mouse-person is the product of archaic thinking.The third chapter analyses the influence of traditional mouse story on the contemporary stories. On the one hand, the story types and motifs in traditional mouse stories are applied in contemporary stories. On the other hand,the evolution of the image in contemporary works has two characteristics: mouse-deity and mouse-demon have become secularization images and the further development of anthropomorphic image.The fourth chapter discusses the three reasons for the evolution of the traditional mouse story. Firstly, change of the context plays an important role in the evolution. The change of context includes the change of material condition and the cognitive change of"the other world". Secondly, the way of communication has been transferred from oral to written, from the spontaneous to the conscious writing. Thirdly, the audiences of the contemporary mouse stories are focused on children. Children’s aesthetic thinking and the introduction of foreign mouse image are affecting the evolution of mouse story.The last part is a conclusion of this paper. The evolution of mouse story and the image of mouse have been carried out in the traditional framework. As one of the few animal images in contemporary works,the mouse of mouse still maintains a strong vitality. In the future, the image of the mouse still has possibilities to break through on the foundation of tradition.