The Writing Of Marriage Changes In Literary Journals In The New Period (1978-1985)

China witnessed three major divorce waves in the 20 th century.Accompanied by these three waves,broken marriage writing was influenced by the social transformation in times of change and exerted a subliminal effect on emancipating minds and changing public opinions during the process of its spreading.Broken marriage was firstly recognized as a literature topic in the 1920 s,while it was seldom mentioned in literature in the 1950 s.In the 1980 s,broken marriage became popular among writers,but due to the limitations of the social belief of that age,they were unable to explore the issue more fully.From 1978 to 1985,there were few ways to disseminate information,and the socialist market economy system wasn't established.These factors made literary journals flourish over that time,which also provides abundant materials and a new perspective to study on the broken marriage writing during 1978 to 1985.The introduction firstly defines three key words,“the New Period(1978-1985)”,“literary journals” and “broken marriage writing”.By clarifying these three definitions,the scope of the study is determined and the value of the study can be proved.Secondly,the introduction divides the existing studies into three categories,reviews written at that time,horizontal and vertical summaries and monographs.This thesis analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of these three types,which makes preparation for determining the study methodology and methods.The body part of this thesis consists of three chapters.Chapter One focuses on the appearance and changes of the broken marriage writing in literary journals during the New Period(1978-1985).In this chapter,this thesis firstly collects data and lists works to show that the broken marriage writing was popular over that time.Then this thesis tries to finds out why the broken marriage writing was a huge hit from two perspectives.One is the direct cause(the emergence of divorce and the reform of the marriage law),the other is the indirect cause(the humanitarianism,“praise and exposure”,“writing the truth” and the realism).Lastly,this chapter analyses the change of the broken marriage writing by studying the trend of literary publishing and the controversy between modernism and realism.Chapter Two uses some broken marriage works in representatives literary journals listed in the Chapter One as study objects.Given the fact that these works share the similar story structure,this chapter focuses on finding reasons for broken marriage and classifies the works by seven themes: “To take refuge”,“To pursue wealth”,“To return to cities”,“To enlighten”,“To pursue love”,“To realize dreams”and “To raise children”.Chapter Three mainly examines the value of the broken marriage writing in the New Period from three perspectives,which are “overcoming the limitation of the age”,“changing the public opinions” and “connecting the former and the later”.“Overcoming the limitation of age” means that the writing achieved a breakthrough in the cognition of that time.“Changing the public opinions” means that the writing agrees with the concept of modern marriage and it surpasses classical Chinese literature and modern Chinese literature.For “Connecting the former and the later”,the former refers to the “Literature of Seventeen Years”(1949-1966),and the later refers to the broken marriage literature in the middle and late 1980 s and the 1990 s.The conclusion summarizes the whole thesis and point out the value and limits of the broken marriage writing.At the same time,the conclusion also reflects of the shortcomings of this study that should be remedied in further studies.