A Study On The Reception Of Wang Anyi's Novel

Wang Anyi’s classic status in contemporary literature is no longer in doubt,but a complete acceptance study of Wang’s novels has yet to emerge.It has been more than forty years since Wang Anyi began publishing in the late 1970 s.As a classic writer in the contemporary literary world,Wang’s novels deserve a large readership,but Wang’s novels are not considered best sellers.Professional readers rate Wang Anyi highly,but among the general readership,their acceptance of Wang Anyi’s novels is not high,and there is a clear difference between the acceptance status of professional and general readers.Although Wang Anyi is one of the more controversial writers,there is a lack of overall research on the controversies that arise in the acceptance of Wang Anyi’s novels by readers.In addition,Wang Anyi has a very important status as a recipient of the Mao Dun Literature Award,and the award has a significant impact on the acceptance of Wang Anyi’s novels.This paper is therefore dedicated to the study of the acceptance of Wang Anyi’s novels by both professional and popular readers,and to clarify the controversies and factors affecting the acceptance of Wang Anyi’s novels.The thesis as a whole consists of three parts: the introduction,the body and the concluding remarks.The first chapter is a study of the acceptance of Wang Anyi’s works from the level of elite readers,which aims to reveal the role of elite discourse in the construction of literary trends and identity through the evaluation of Wang Anyi by academic papers,literary history anthologies and editors of journals and publishers,in order to clarify how Wang Anyi has been gradually classicised in literary history and how she has been incorporated into various trends.The second chapter examines the acceptance of Wang Anyi’s works from the level of popular readers,focusing on three aspects: readers’ online evaluations of Wang Anyi’s novels,evaluations of film and television adaptations of Wang Anyi’s novels,and sales of Wang Anyi’s works.Focusing on the different evaluations of Wang Anyi’s different works among the mass readership,the overall popularity of Wang Anyi’s works,and in the context of the current consumer context,it explores the reasons why the sales of Wang Anyi’s works are far less than those of his peer writers such as Yu Hua and Su Tong.The third chapter uses the theory of acceptance aesthetics to focus on the controversies that arise during the acceptance of Wang Anyi’s novels,to explore why there is a discrepancy between Wang Anyi’s understanding of her works and readers’ understanding of her works,and to provide an explanation for the controversies about Wang Anyi in the literary world.The forth chapter examines the impact of "awards" on the acceptance of Wang Anyi’s novels,and explores the inescapable influence of the award mechanism on writers’ works in contemporary literature.