The Image Of The Southwest United University In The Novel Series Of Wild Gourd

Since the80s of last century, the Southwest United University (a temporary united university in anti-Japanese war period) phenomenon has become the constant target of research and discussion in the fields of the history of the Chinese thoughts, education, and culture. In the history of contemporary literature in China’s mainland, Zong Pu’s series of Wild Gourd is the only novel, a masterpiece that reveals comprehensively the8years’ history the Southwest United University.Wild Gourd series unveils the panorama of the university from three perspectives. The first one takes the angle of the intellectual elite themselves. The author is an intellectual elite herself, who witnessed with her father the eight years’history of Southwest United. Her understanding and appraisal of the intellectual elite will surely be more profound than those of the general public, which will definitely be imprinted with her personal experience of the history, bearing a position and attitude characterized by family background. The second perspective goes from history side. The novel makes its setting in the anti-Japanese war period, aiming at revealing the intellectual elites of Southwest United under the particular occasion. She spent a specially large space on depicting the growing educated youth who had joined in the Yunnan-Burma frontline. In the retrospection of history from the two angles, the novel reflects the issues of war, life and death, as well as growth. Last, the novel comes back to reality. As Croce said,"All history is contemporary history." From the1980s, Zong Pu has devoted great efforts to the revelation of the eight years’history of the once Southwest United. Apart from some deeper factors concerning the author’s emotional attachment, cultural contexts like the1980s new enlightenment,1990s enlightenment are the starting points that we will consider of Zong Pu’s creation of the Wild Gourd series. The novel reveals the history through literature depiction, presenting readers a way to imagine the Southwest United in the trend of new era imprinted with self-contradiction, and also her version of the soul history that big era.