Narrative Perspectives And Media Communication Of Chinese Detective Stories

The detective story has become an important part of the popular literature since Allan Poe created it. It is the inevitable outcome of the development of urban industrial society and is the cultural product which the print media,film and television media,the Internet and other mass media carry and spread. In the process of development,the detective story,with a tenacious vitality,always highlights its own unique aesthetic features forward. The detective story can meet the readers’ demands of recreation,entertainment and emotional disclosure,whose aesthetic characteristics constitute intricate plots,thrilling scenes,mysterious suspenses and proficiency detectives. Mystery,horror,suspense and other aesthetic elements find an outlet for readers’ violence instinct,which provide a new experience for the readers’ dull daily lives. The detective story is the game of setting and solving riddles between the writer and the reader around the case continually. The detective,in the unknown space,looking for clues to solve crimes,sets riddles for the readers continually. The readers participate actively in reconstructing the crime scene,disentangle truth from falsehood,judge the murderer in the traces,and experience the puzzle pleasure from the unexpected ending.This paper focuses on the Chinese detective story. Based on the collected detective works and its cultural derivatives,Chinese detective stories will be put into the background of the world detective stories and will be analysed by the first application of the prototype theory,the narrative theory,the theory of morphology of the folktale and the related theory of popular culture. Transversally,this paper will explore the peculiarity of narrative art and the enlightenment to our cultural production in the process of the detective story turning into popular culture,which strives to become a useful supplement to the Chinese detective story.This paper consists of preface and four chapters. In the preface,the current research,origins,research methods,innovations and the definition of the detective story will be discussed in this paper. According to this idea,several key elements have been selected so that the Chinese detective story can be studied transversally,some deep reasons will be explored during its reception and creation and the scope of its cultural study will be enlarged.The first chapter takes myth,religion,legend as the research objects by using the prototype theory to explore the cultural origins of the detective story. In the ancient mythology and religious legends,such the elements as mystery,crime,rewarding the right and punishing the wrong,the idea of law,and detectives in the detective story,as the cultural and psychological accumulation,lurk in the ancient people’s collective unconsciousness. Allan Poe’s life experience,the traditional European literature and his concept of creation provided an opportunity for his creation. In this section,his five modes of his detective stories will be expounded. Conan Doyle took the detective stories to a new level. His "Holmes-- Watson" mode has produced profound influence on Chinese writers. The main content of Gong’an or crime-case fictions is to solve the criminal cases,in which contains the Chinese traditional culture,the traditional legal concepts,the traditional mode of thinking. And it is an important source of Chinese detective stories and exerts subtle roles on them.In chapter two,the creation modes will be studied for the first time systematically. By using Propp’s theory of morphology of the folktale,specific creation rules have been induced and seven basic creation modes have been summarized about Chinese detective stories in order to avoid duplication and provide the beneficial references for the contemporary detective stories.From the perspective of narratology,some cases at home and abroad have been selected in the third chapter to analyze the narrative viewpoint and explore the types of criminals and detectives and even the interaction between them. The narrative perspective,the narrative space and the narrative language will be studied to analyse the narrative art of the detective story and its remarkable characteristics.The fourth chapter discusses how mass media have an effect on the occurrence,development and spread of Chinese detective stories. The study shows that a close relationship exists between them. Mass media provided the material basis for the existence of the detective story and translators played an vital role in the process of translation,which led to its occurrence directly. In addition,the present situation and the canonization of suspense novels will be discussed in the context of the Internet. Last but not the least,John Fiske’s theory of popular culture will be used to explore what enlightenment the cultural industries of the western detective stories offer to our cultural production and to analyse the present situation of the detective fans in our country.