Body Expatiation On Modern Chinese Literature

Based on a kind of "Body Self-consciousness", this dissertation aims to study various body phenomena and texts in modern literature by touching upon specific contexts, expecting to provide a new way for the construction of new literature history. This dissertation examines the "body" in modern literature mainly from the following aspects.From the late Qing dynasty to the period of "the Fourth of May", an individual's body has stepped onto the platform of public politics. This dissertation will conduct the analysis of body utterances vertically and horizontally during the period of "the Fourth of May". In the vertical direction, the development of body's nationalization in the late Qing dynasty will be briefly reviewed, on which the examination for the succession and alternation of body utterances will be based from the late Qing dynasty to the period of "the Fourth of May";in the horizontal line, we will study the synchronic influence that the body utterances in the age of enlightenment and anti-enlightenment in western countries exerted on that of "the Fourth of May" and by comparison the sameness and the difference will be observed in the body utterances in the age of western and oriental enlightenment. Based on this, the dissertation further shows that the body was involved in a conflict of being presented and being hidden in anti-feudal utterances during the period of "the Fourth of May". Besides this, for such a plight that the individual body was in when it made towards the public, this point will be elaborated by studying two different cases. Firstly, from the perspective of thought, it mainly probes into the relationship between personal experience and historical process by studying Wu Yu, who on one hand was awarded as a hero for his allegation of "anti-confucianism and non-filial duty" and on the other hand was scolded and suspected for writing lascivious poems and going whoring. Secondly, from the perspective of literature, by examining "Chen Lun" written by Yu Dafu, it analyzes the relationship between body narration and public approval reflected in the target texts from three aspects, namely, "the conflict between soul and body" and mainstream approval, private narration and public space and body desire and national utterances.In the early revolutionary literature, revolution was a way that petty bourgeoisie confirmed their passion. Therefore, the early revolutionary literature has been equipped with rich romanticism, so the body has become a carrier of realizing their romantic revolutionary imagination. Meanwhile, the tendency to decadent epicurism in revolutionary literature, as an extreme embodiment of this romantic style, has also been achieved in an incorporated form of pioneer and decadence in a body. In this part, the author will conduct an analysis on a novel model of "revolution and love" from the angle of body.Here the author tries to figure out that this novel model exhibits the efforts that have been made to melt aesthetically individual desire into political narration and that it is just "body" that functions to connect aesthetics with ideology. However, because complexity and contradiction of personal experience is ignored, "body" has just been provided with the form of gaining the public approval, which simply leads to the failure of this model. Finally, by analyzing "Shi" written by Mao Dun, the author intends to observe the relationship between the truthfulness of personal experience and the description of women's body that he is keen on in his early pursuit of literature creation and find that "women's body" can perform an expressive function in conveying the writer's personal experience. In this book, the way that Mao Dun describes women's body comes from his ontic body concept shown in his novel and this concept further influences the formation of his historical notions. At the same time, his creation course from "experience" towards "concept" also illustrates that there exists irremediable contradiction between the pursuit of truthfulness and the limitations on concepts in revolutionary literature.In "Hai Pai" (mainly referring to Shanghai) culture and literature, "body" problem is always outstanding. In this part, the author firstly conducts the analysis on two cases for the construction of body utterances in "Hai Pai" culture. The first case takes a journal named "Huan Zhou" as an example and by examining this example we intend to summarize the efforts that "Huan Zhou" coterie has made to be against body utterances during the period of "the Fourth of May" and to construct their own body utterances. The second one is to carry out the analysis and evaluation on the construction of Zhang Jingsheng's sex language during the period of "the Fourth of May" and the practice of sex language during the period of "Hai Pai" culture. In addition to this, for the literature creation, we mainly conduct the analysis on the description of women's body in the novels of "fresh sense" school. The description of women's body in the novels of this school is obviously influenced by western film culture and is characterized as the symbolism of urban commodity. Furthermore, when analyzing the features of time and space of urban body, the author thinks that the novels of "fresh sense" school exhibit a sense of time retreat and space foregrounding. Finally, this chapter also draws more attention on Zhang Ailing's "daily body composition" in urban situations and hopes to show the significance and value of this writing style in the development of history. The author argues that Zhang Ailing's focus on "daily body composition" must be closely related with her philosophy of nihilism and historical consciousness. Moreover, starting from the features of urban culture, it is also significant to see how Zhang Ailing perceives the world and establishes her own image in daily body sense. Here, the author will unscramble the way she perceives the world and the way she controls people to perceive her (mainly referring to clothes and photos) and hope to obtain a new insight intounderstanding this person.Starting from the point of modern writers' anxiety of expression and the presence of body, this dissertation also discusses the expressive function through specific example analysis, through which body can be borrowed to release the writer's anxiety of expression. Two cases are examined in this part. The first case is to analyze the combination of form and meaning when body is used to convey superorganic life experience by studying the body expression in "wild grass" of Lu Xun. The second one is to understand the "abstract lyricism" that Shen Congwen pursued in the forties of 20th centuryfollowing the clue of "sensibility ------ language ------ body" from the point of description ofwomen's body in "Kan Hong Lu" written by him. And it is also found that body can perform the functions of expressing abstract life style and aesthetic form.Since in the modern literature we mainly describe women's body from the men's viewpoint, it is indispensable to observe how women themselves describe their body experience. Lastly, from a viewpoint of gender, this dissertation focuses on self-description of women's body experience and shows that the description of women's body experience is the reconstruction of women, history and literature. And this point will be elaborated by exemplifying the themes of whoredom and disease in the interaction and dialogue with historical utterances. On the discussion of the theme of whoredom, the author thinks, national model and class model urge the formation of main model of describing the girlies and influence the literature creation of most writers. The opposite narrations of bitterness and joviality appearing in the two novels written by Lao She and Ding Ling represent two different positions of agreement and estrangement towards main utterance model of whoredom. On the discussion of disease, the author thinks that women disease described by other people takes on obvious political and cultural features and self-description of women disease presents a kind of resistance and subversion. When women can actively describe the disease in their creation, the disease will not be the destiny that society and culture impose on them and they try to get rid of and it will be their positions they cannot refuse to be in.