Stand In The Human Spirit Deep Muse Of Dance

Religious narrative in novels, as tragic narrative, revolutionary narrative, family narrative and other narrative types, is subsumbed under the thematic narrative category. However, compared with extensive reseach into other thematic narratives, little attention was paid to studies of religious narrative in circles of criticism until the New Period when generation of writers like Zhang Chengzhi, Bei Cun, and Shi Tiesheng appeared For them, religion is involved in the domain of literary creation not just for its uniqueness; furthermore, it is embedded into writers' aesthetic vision in that religion concerns man's actual existence and his spiritual influence with the shift to man's soul. This reassessment of the relationship between literature and religion helps to improve the integrative dimention of Chinese literature. Exactly, it opens up a new phase, complementing the long-standing monotonous pracice of literature works' being created simply from angles of "nation, society and history", that literature has a dialogue with the transcendental worid, especially with the religious world. Such is the source of the present thesis.In the thesis, it mainly reflects on the following issues: What's the relationship between Chinese novels and religious belief in the New Period? How does religion become the narrative matter of novels? Since religious narrative entails the dialogue with "God", then what's the pecularity in terms of its narrative and aesthetic aspects? And how can this experience of literary creation enable the development of future novels? It is clear that all these issues intend to explore the relationship between the social cultural background for the emergence of religious narrative, subject matter of religion, and its narrative progression, together with narrative formation and aesthetic features of religious narrative. Meanwhile, the thesis tentatively offers a narrative morality interpretation of religious narrative from the perspective of critics and readers, with a view to show the outline of religious narrative against the background of modem ethics and supply a feasible way to better understand works of religious narrative.Although religious narrative, the object of the present study, suffers limitations due to its immatuarity, yet it has followed the narrative tradition initiated by Lu Xun, "Father of Contemporary Novels", that literature concentrates on man's spiritual world. Specifically, it highlights the quality of literary works by divorcing it from the abuse of empiricism and abstractionism, thereby combining the novel's form and its spiritual connotation into an organic whole. Besides, it makes religious revelation a necessary component for works of excellence. That is precisely the first important reason why religious narrative novels should deserve universal recognition.