A Narrative Study Of Yan Lianke’s Dystopian Novels

The ideal world is an eternal dream that haunts human society.In ancient Greece,it is called "Utopia",in ancient China,it is called "Peach Blossom land",and in the West in the Middle Ages,it is called "Utopia".But no matter how the nouns change,they represent the pursuit of an ideal world by human beings at all times and in all countries.However,utopian dreams often turn into utopian nightmares when the pursuit of power,technology and so on is taken to the extreme.After two World Wars and three industrial revolutions,human beings became more and more lost in the trap of utopia.Many people began to doubt the possibility of utopian realization and began to question the destruction of human subjectivity by modernization.Therefore,a series of post-modern works,especially the famous "dystopian trilogy",emerged in the West in the 19 th and 20 th centuries.In China,too,stories of utopian disillusionment have been cropping up since the 1980 s.Among them,Yan Lianke’s novels are particularly representative in this respect.Yan Lianke constructs the "villages" in the Haru Columbine Mountains into his own dystopian novels,which narrate the eternal issues of human subjectivity,life,power desire and so on.It can be said that the study of Yan Lianke’s dystopian novels is to explore how Yan Lianke interprets the Chinese vernacular after the disillusionment of utopian ideals.The thesis is divided into three chapters.The first chapter mainly discusses the three elements of Yan Lianke’s dystopian novels.The three narrative elements of Yan Lianke’s dystopian novels are "post-peach blossom land" environment,mythological characters and allegorical plot.In the aspect of environment,"Later Peach Blossom Land" refers to the world after the Peach Blossom Land shattered its dream."Later Peach Blossom Land",like Peach Blossom Land,is in the isolated time and space.The historical background of "Later Peach Blossom Land" pushes the utopian world to the dystopian world,which makes the originally beautiful life of Peach Blossom Land collapse,showing the misery and pain in the isolated environment.Mythological figures have local and divine nature,which is the projection of Yan Lianke’s spirit,the vanguard of questioning and resisting Western modernization,and a manifestation of Chinese national spirit.In terms of plot,the allegorical plots of Yan Lianke’s dystopian novels have the characteristics of genre and metaphor,which are reflected in the reflection of the historical and current utopias through exaggeration,deformation,absurdity,fantasy and other expressive techniques,while absorbing nourishment from the traditional Chinese cultural spirit,endowing the text with the spirit of national allegory.The second chapter mainly analyzes the narrative theme of Yan Lianke’s dystopian novels.The narrative theme of Yan Lianke’s dystopian novels can be divided into three parts:spiritual transformation,physical transformation and individual redemption.The spiritual transformation theme shows the horror of human rationality being consumed in the face of modern desires.The theme of body change expresses Yan Lianke’s two emotions: one is to praise the harmony between man and nature;the other is to express his concern about the alienation of human body in the industrial society;The theme of individual salvation is Yan Lianke’s inability to fight against the Western modernization of the method of liberation,he wants to complete spiritual detachment,so as to face the Western modernization calmly.The third chapter mainly discusses the narrative significance of Yan Lianke’s dystopian novels.Yan Lianke’s dystopian novels are a special existence in contemporary China,whose bold language and extraordinary content all show his unique "writing under the shadow of utopia".His work is still rooted in the Chinese countryside,and all his works are rooted in the harrowing Columbine Mountains.He takes the village "on the ground" and "looks out" at the world there.To sum up,this paper attempts to explain the three elements,theme and significance of Yan Lianke’s dystopian novels through the analysis and research of Yan Lianke’s dystopian novels.