A Study Of Postmodernism Factors In Liu Zhenyun’s Novels

Since the New Age,the Chinese literary scene has been profoundly influenced by Western postmodernist thinking,and Liu Zhenyun’s novels are no exception.His work incorporates a number of post-modernist elements,and have experienced three periods: incubation period-outbreak period-stable period.It corresponds to the three main stages in Liu Zhenyun’s creative process: the new realistic novel,the new historicist novel and the novel since the new century.Since the 80 s,the postmodern factors in Liu Zhenyun’s works can be specifically analyzed from four aspects: theme,character,structure,and language.First,from the perspective of themes,it can be roughly summarized into three categories: the spiritual dilemma in the essence of life,the national fable in the rural picture,and the philosophical proposition in the labyrinth of "relations".In Liu Zhenyun’s early works,he focused on the daily life and spiritual world of small people,and in the form of fragmented life flow narrative and desire-based personal psychological description,he showed people’s anxious,helpless,confused,and negative mental states in embarrassment,subverted and disintegrated people’s pursuit and recognition of value,and initially revealed the postmodern factors in Liu Zhenyun’s novels.In the stage of neo-historicist novels,Liu Zhenyun’s anti-historical evolution concept combined with rural empirical writing,and derived works that are rich in "Yanjin" local characteristics and have postmodern mentality and consciousness,integrating concreteness and universality,and using national historical themes to create spatial allegories and non-fluid time fables that dialogue with the world.Since the new century,Liu Zhenyun has built a labyrinth of "relationship" with the expressions of "screwing up" and "winding up",exploring loneliness,growth,pursuit,communication,emotion and other philosophical propositions that everyone must experience in life.He explores the philosophical propositions of life that everyone is bound to experience.Secondly,the characters are characterised by analogisation,crudeness and division.Liu Zhenyun is good at reflecting the psychological,consciousness and thinking characteristics of a class of people through his portrayal of group faces,and shows the process of transforming some of the characters from symbolic beings with feelings and thoughts into symbols that can be casually reproduced in connotationless and depthless situations.The tendency of vulgarization has already appeared in Liu Zhenyun’s early works,which is not unrelated to the social environment of China during the transition period and the influence of post-modernist thinking,and is most evident in the trivialization of the ’small grey characters’ in the neo-realistic novels and the vulgarity of the ’big historical figures’ in the neo-historical novels.The fragmentation of the characters is manifested through both the invalidation of identity and the uncertainty of identity.Thirdly,on the structural level,the spatio-temporal structure in Liu Zhenyun’s novels exhibits extraordinary postmodernist characteristics such as zigzagging,jumping and fracturing,specifically manifested in the nested collage in space and the juxtaposition of jumps in time.Spatially,the nested structure disrupts the conventional narrative rhythm,entwining the fates of seemingly unrelated characters;another way of spatial representation,the montage collage,blends history and reality with dreams and fiction,removing the boundaries between real physical space and fictional space.In terms of time,there is a characteristic of "disorder" and "chaos".Liu Zhenyun breaks the traditional logic of linear time development in his novels,and uses post-modern narrative devices such as leaps,flashbacks and suspensions to organise and connect events and plots,outlining a world that is absurd and boundless but closer to the essence of life amidst fragmentation and chaos.Fourthly,from a linguistic point of view,the experimental and playful nature of postmodernism is reflected in his language.The first point is reflected in the de-referentialisation of language,where the extension of language leads to the separation of "signifier" from "reference" and the constant meaningless multiplication of energy symbols,creating an "inflated" spectacle of language."The second point is reflected in the language style of irony and black humour,and the third point is reflected in the obvious tendency of scandalisation,where words of curiosity,vulgarity and filth abound between statements,showing the grotesque and decadent aesthetic style of postmodernist language.Liu Zhenyun is constantly looking for new breakthroughs in his fiction,and his transformation and use of post-modern elements reflect his unique style and strong spirit of innovation and change in his literary creation.