Deconstruction And Transcendence

Old Tales Retold is the most unique work among all Lu Xun's literary works.Since it was released in 1936,the study of Old Tales Retold has come a long way over the past 80 years.Since the 1980 s,with the introduction of western irony theory,the interpretation of Old Tales Retold has gained a new academic growth point.This paper studies Lu Xun's Old Tales Retold based on collating and summarizing existing achievements,and uses the irony theory to further interpret the text of this novel and to explore the unique value of Old Tales Retold.The paper mainly consists of five parts as follows.In the Introduction,through diachronically collating the research history of Old Tales Retold,it reveals that the research on Old Tales Retold shifted the focus from“sarcasm” to “irony” at the time node of the 1980 s and it also points out that the irony study in the Old Tales Retold is confronted with the problem of confusing “irony”with “sarcasm”.Chapter 1,first of all,distinguishes the differences between “irony” and“sarcasm”,and points out that irony has the characteristics of deconstruction and transcendence.Moreover,it also points out that there are three types of irony in Old Tales Retold,namely verbal irony,situational irony and romantic irony.Chapter 2 introduces that Lu Xun cast a skeptical eye on traditional Chinese thoughts in Old Tales Retold.In the fierce conflicts between history and reality,and between tradition and modern,Lu Xun,by means of irony,negated the feudal etiquette and ethics advocated by Confucianism and the Taoist ideal of everything being the same and living in seclusion.Chapter 3 introduces that Lu Xun's held a very contradictory attitude toward sacrifice.On the one hand,Lu Xun deeply recognized the darkness and absurdity of social history,based on which he came up with the consciousness of “historical intermediates” and acknowledged the inevitability of sacrifice.On the other hand,Lu Xun saw that the sacrificers were not understood by the public and they even suffered from the tragic fate of being taken advantage of,so he refused to advocate the spirit ofsacrifice.In Old Tales Retold,Lu Xun deconstructed the sacrifice of mythological heroes and historical giants by means of irony so as to present his reflection on the meaning of sacrifice.Chapter 4 introduces that different from the “deep sorrow and anger” and“anguish and hesitation” in his works of Outcry and Wandering,the creation of Old Tales Retold reflects Lu Xun's pursuit of self-transcendence.By means of irony,Lu Xun was able to move freely between light and darkness,and between hope and despair so as to successfully break the bondage of all rules and enter from the finite real world into the infinite spiritual world,thus eventually getting to the unrestrained,free spiritual realm.