A Study On The Folk Narrative Strategies Of Zheng Yuanjie’s Fairy Tales

The contemporary fairy tale writer Zheng Yuanjie has the reputation of "the king of fairy tales".Since he began to devote himself to literary creation in 1977,he has been working hard and insisting on writing the monthly magazine "The King of Fairy Tales"for 30 years.He has created many well-known fairy tale images like Pipiru,Luxisi,Shuke,Beta and so on.Up to now,his fairy tale works have been published in six series:character Biography,Pipiru and Rusisi,Zodiac Fairy Tale,Pipiru’s Animal Kingdom,Shuke Beta and Pipiru Safety Encyclopedia,which created a colorful and lively fairy tale kingdom for children.The cumulative sales of his fairy tale works have exceeded 300 million copies,creating a sales miracle for Chinese children’s books and periodicals.Through careful text analysis,the author found that Zheng Yuanjie’s fairy tales are inextricably linked with the folks.First of all,fairy tales,as a literary genre,have a natural connection with folk literature.Folk literature has long been the source and blueprint of children’s literature.Secondly,Zheng Yuanjie,as a writer of children’s literature,has an independent choice of standpoint.His fairy tale creation has always adhered to the child-centered approach,standing with a clear-cut stand on the side of the disadvantaged group of children,with a clear and firm civil stand.The interweaving and fusion of these factors finally appear as the choice of folk narrative strategies,creating unique Zheng-style fairy tales.Zheng Yuanjie creatively made use of the tradition of folk literature and always adhered to the folk standpoint.This article intends to systematically analyze the folk narrative strategies in Zheng Yuanjie’s fairy tales:the shaping of fairy tale images,the construction of narrative structure and the publicity of folk spitit,trying to clarify the relationship between Zheng Yuanjie’s fairy tales and the folks,and explore the deep reasons why Zheng Yuanjie’s fairy tales gained reputation.This paper includes the following parts:The introduction outlines the core issues and research significance of this article.In this part,the writer tries to present a review of the research on Zheng Yuanjie’s fairy tales since the 1980s,and clarify her own research ideas,the research methods that will be used in this article,and define the relevant concepts involved in the thesis.The first chapter focuses on the characters in Zheng Yuanjie’s fairy tales.Through analysis,we found that there is a kind of consistency between the characters in Zheng Yuanjie’s fairy tales and those in folk fantasy stories(folk fairy tales),which can be classified into four categories:ordinary human images,animal images,gods and demons,and treasure images.Through analyzing the fairy tale characters,this paper discusses the inheritance and innovation of folk traditions in the characterization of Zheng Yuanjie’s fairy tales.Zheng Yuanjie’s fairy tales are consistent with folk fairy tales in the way of constructing characters,and present a new look under the author’s ingenuity and innovation.The second chapter focuses on the narrative structure of Zheng Yuanjie’s fairy tales.In terms of character structure,Zheng Yuanjie adopted the traditional Chinese character structure of "binary opposition",and emphasized the opposition between "good" and"bad" in the story narrative,thereby shaping the ideal image of children,parents,and teachers.On the surface structure,Zheng Yuanjie inherited the "triple structure","chain structure" and "embedding structure"of folk fairy tales.In addition,based on Prop story morphology theory,we found that Zheng’s fairy tale creation shows amazing consistency in its deep structure.Zheng Yuanjie’s fairy tales are similar to folk fairy tales in the plots like leaving home,obtaining treasures,difficult trials and so on.The themes of these two kinds of fairy tales are about growth and happiness.The third chapter focuses on the folk spirit of Zheng Yuanjie’s fairy tales.Zheng Yuanjie is different from other fairy tale writers.His fairy tale works not only made full use of folk literature and art,but also showed distinctive folk spirit.Zheng Yuanjie takes children’s need as the starting point,and insists on children’s standpoint and humanity standpoint.He is determined to innovate and break the shackles of tradition,subverting the form of traditional fairy tales and education.In the form of exaggerated and absurd fantasy,he has subverted the order of the adult world and brought a carnival feast for children.The conclusion focuses on the influence of Zheng’s use of folk narrative strategies in fairy tale creation,and clarifies the relationship between fairy tales and modernity.We come to a conclusion that Zheng Yuanjie’s fairy tales responded to the personality discourse theory of fairy tales proposed during the New Period of Chinese history.The end of this conclusion will discuss the significance of folk resources for the creation of children’s literature.