Discourses Of Modern Chinese Fictional Theories: A Dialogic Context

As a genre at the core of the whole modern Chinese literature structure, fiction and its research have always been the most important objects of modern Chinese literature research. However, an overview of the study in the past decades suggests a dim field of modern Chinese fictional theory research existing under the splendid surface. The principal defects of such a field are as follows: First, there exists an unbalance between the fictional theory study and phenomenal study of novelists and novels which directly or indirectly leads to the difficulty in deepening the study and the lack of relational systematic study; Second, fictional theory study lacks speciality and systematicity as it is usually included in the whole "literary trend" study; Third, of the limited few works on modern Chinese fictional theory up to now, some merely picture the history of the modern Chinese fictional theory, and others only fall into a kind of summary and analysis of the existing materials. From the perspective of discourse study, these researches only confine themselves to the "text" level of the Chinese fictional theoretical discourse. On the whole, they keep themselves in a state of "linear study" and fragmented study, e.g. the break of the refined with the popular, the separation of the traditional influence study from the foreign influence study, the ignorance of the conscious option of the theoretical subject or the limit to combing the theory of certain writer or certain group. And therefore, we see no "relation structure" study with a wholeness anda historical sense. Such a study apparently lags behind the development of the contemporary literature study, and on the other hand, it can not connect the modern Chinese fictional theory study with the modern Chinese literature study in general. A new window for this discipline can not be opened up.As is well known, the key reason for such a loss in the modern Chinese fictional theory lies in its backwardness and naivety which are mirrored up in its classical Chinese and western counterparts. The study, if only constrained to sort, analyze and interpret the existing fictional theories themselves, will have nothing important with the exception of historical value. However, located in an important intersection between the classical Chinese and western fictional theory and carrying the traces of the confrontation of Chinese and western cultural and literary ideas, the modern Chinese fictional theory possesses a special context, a discourse subject, a discourse object and a discourse circulation state. Obviously, the predominant problem in this field is not 'what is said' but 'who says' , 'how to say' and 'why it is said this way instead of that way' . As a result, the important way to make up for the above- discussed flaws is to adopt the discourse analysis theory and to take a systematic and profound research into the modern Chinese fictional theory from the perspective of comparative literature.This study intends to grasp the important discourse of modern Chinese fictional theory and closely combine macro-study with micro-study so that a 'relation structure' study can be developed and thus achieve the purpose of deconstructing the linear or the fragmented state of the existing study in this field. This dissertation pays a close attention to the 'texts' of the modern Chinese fictional theory discourse on the one hand, attaches importance to the function and significance of its components including discourse speaker, listener, context and the condition and state of discourse communication on the other hand. This benefits connecting the studyin this field with the whole modern Chinese literature study and other fields' studies, and promoting, directly or indirectly, the research work in these fields concerned, and, finally facilitating the development of modern Chinese literature as a discipline. With a focus on the mutual influence of the modern Chinese fictional theory discourse, traditional Chinese fictional theory discourse and western fictional theory discourse, and the problem...