The Last Person To Collect Folk Tales

After the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art.Dong Junlun began to collect and sort out folk stories.In his sixty years of career,he has been insisting on collecting and sorting out folk stories.More than fifty books of folk stories have been published,including Liu Zhidan's Story,Shimen Opening,Yu Xian Yuan,Liaozhai Branch and it's sequel,Confucius Family-Ninety-nine and a half Stories.It is difficult to transform oral narrative into written literature.Even if the same narrator tells the same folk story at the same time,different collectors and organizers have different understandings of the particularity and complexity of folk literature and different emphasis.Their literary accomplishment and artistic level are different,and the folk stories they write are different.However,how can we make folk literature that lose its oral characteristics gain new charm and become popular "written" folk tales?Apart from the choice of the theme of the story,the retention of the oral narrative features,the appropriate addition of literariness and the implicit identity of the writer are all very important.As a successful collector of folk literature in the 20th century,Dong Junlun's collection of stories must have its merits.First of all,keep the original concise and life-like features of oral narrative to the greatest extent,and have a strong readability.They regard themselves as "new narrators" of folk stories,rather than recorders,and so on.In 1957,Liu Kui's work Talking about Collection and Arrangement questioned Dong Junlun's and Jiangyuan's methods of work,and a debate on the methods of collecting and sorting out folk literature reached its climax.How to distinguish between reorganization,adaptation and re-creation?This involves a "degree" problem.Now,looking back on this discussion,the main reason is attributed to the different purposes of both sides and the subject system.But behind this controversy lies the biased trend of academic research methods and the academic crisis.Dong Junlun,who was involved in the controversy for no reason,did not change his work style since the controversy,but added more obvious Literariness to folk literature.This is inseparable from the change of his own concept of folk literature.The decline of folk literature makes scholars seek a new way out.Oral research paradigm and ethnographic poetry bring instant brilliance to the study of folk literature.However,the crisis has not been thoroughly resolved.By tracing back to the origin and exploring the birth and development of folk literature and art,we can know the reasons.However,for folk literature itself,where to go?Maybe we can get some inspiration from Dong Junlun's folk stories.