The Phenomenon Of Transboundary Writing And Horizon Broadening Of Literature Study In The Internet Age

This dissertation mainly examines the transboundary writing and horizon broadening of literature in the Internet Age.Starting from analyzing some certain types of texts between literary and non-literary writing that are originated or spread in the Internet age,it proposes some original viewpoints focusing on the necessity,possibility,theoretical basis and practical approaches of classifying such texts into the horizon of literature research.The discussion is supposed to sort the primitive types of Internet-based transboundary writing,sum up its impact on the traditional literary theories,seek the basis for broadening the horizon,propose the solutions and so forth.In China,the development of network writing merely has a history of two decades or so,but it has reformed the literature pattern.Recently,the internet literature study has primarily established its complete system,having not only reached a preliminary consensus on basic theoretical issues but accomplished numerous multi-perspective and in-depth researches as well.The scope of this research consists of both such macro aspects as“meta studies”and such micro ones as type,text studies.Issues like the canonization of the internet literature and the identifying of such literature as part of the literacy history have become topics among scholars and experts.Taking these abundant preliminary achievements as the basis,the study of internet literature will expand its scope to discuss the overall impact of the internet development on the literature;simultaneously,“the studies of the literature in the internet age" based on the present literature pattern will also be fully carried out.Nevertheless,such studies as the ones on the internet literature and the literature in the internet age are still problematic and require further discussion.The reasons for such problems may be the limited targets and concepts of the literature studies which caused the ignorance of large amount of borderline texts.Although the studies on the literature in the internet age all have a consensus that many unprecedented forms belong to the internet writing,the bulk of their attention is focused on the texts of defined forms,namely,the network novels,network proses,network poetries and so forth,but little effort has ever been taken to those wandering between literary and non-literary types.These types of writing,including the recently-created ones that are supported by the internet and the extensively-influential ones that boosted by the characteristics of the internet media,are featured with huge availability on line,large audience scope and significant influence in reality;however,they do not conform to the traditional conventions and definitions of literature.Hence,they are neglected by the studies of the literature.What’s worse,such denying of their deserved identities has caused an imbalance among the transmissibility,influential power and the degree of academic focus.These types of texts contain four main types.First,the texts show the discipline overlapping among literature and some other fields.This kind of texts can be placed into a particular subject,namely,history,philosophy,psychology and even natural science.Nevertheless,they replace the modern academic discourse system with the words that are of subjective tones,emotional moods and poetic understanding.Moreover,such writing puts all its efforts in the “subject-to-subject” dialogue with the potential readers.Literalization of other humanities and social science is not the patent of the Internet age,but some new characteristics that appeared in the internet age have proved the necessity of the efforts and discussion.Second,the texts show the superposition of literature and art.As a brand-new medium combining all kinds of information receiving media,Internet has merely little restriction that based on any traditional rules or forms,so words can be freely combined,in any proportion,with the images,dynamic images,music,video,Internet screenshots.They can even form "hypertext" through the interaction between the subjects.We can sum it up as "text +".We can,referring to the precedent of movie literature and TV literature,include it in literature research,but we should also pay attention to some particularity of Internet "text +".For instance,sometimes other art elements are not only the kind of modification or foil,but actually have become a part of the entire narration;moreover,sometimes the recipients have the privilege to freely decide whether they need to use audio,dynamic figure,video and other element;furthermore,the audience can utilize various ways to appreciate the same test.Third,the texts show the cross-domain of literature and daily life.Some daily-life texts,such as emails,dairies in blogs,daily stories posted in BBS,graphics and dialogues in WeChat Moments and etc.,have come into the public arena through the Internet,and therefore are endowed with literary features in the aspects like text content,the text form,the subject state of writing and accepting,and so on.We can also propose to construct a new field to research network daily text,but we will still need to obtain resources and materials from a certain old discipline.Nevertheless,the “mother”is solely the literature to the studies of network daily text.Fourth,the texts show fuzzy boundaries of literature and criticism.China has a tradition of literary criticism.Literary criticism was not expected to be impersonal,rational and objective until its acceptance of the influence of cultural modernity in the 20 th century.Literary criticism,taking literature as its center,comes into the analysis,evaluations and judgments for all literary activities or literary phenomenon;nonetheless,the literary criticisms written spontaneously by present netizens are almost nothing but the literary writing.They create a new criticism paradigm beside the professional one,which may inherit the traditional imagery and poetic criticism,awake the Oriental academic concept of experience and perception,and set up a bridge among criticism,creation and acceptance,if properly used.Internet transboundary impacts and subverts the traditional literature subjectivity and literature function,but neither the aesthetic system of literature in the 19 th century nor the literary system of the 20 th century will be unsuitable for any Internet transboundary writing research.However,although it will be unsuccessful to bring Internet transboundary writing into the horizon of literature studies by reconstructing the essence of literature,it is still feasible to follow the analytical thinking pattern.This can be discussed from five aspects: the historical reference,the mechanism gist,the form gist,the subject gist and the horizon gist.In the concept of the pre-modern “Great Literature”,the western understanding of Literature contains all text writing;while the Chinese “Wen” is roughly the equivalent to“humanity”,including history,philosophy,ethics and etc.Narrowing the connotative meaning of the literary concept and tightening of literature research horizon are modern phenomenon which did not exist until after the self-discipline of literary concept in the 19 th century had come into being.Internet writing which tends to confuse the modern discipline boundaries,domain boundaries and medium boundaries has the tendency to return to the integral “the great literature”.The concept of “the great literature” is established on the specific conception mechanism,the text form and content of the subject.In content,literature is a kind of poetic mechanism that merges with the whole social life.Moreover,such fusion is achieved by the particular literary mechanism: the mutual constructive relationships of breaking the binary opposition,eliminating boundary between subjects and objects;besides,various forms of consciousness are fused all the holistic experience and realization of the social life.The texts that overlap the literature and other subjects as well as the texts overlap the literature and daily life utilize nothing but this very poetic mechanism.In the aspect of text form,literature is a form of heterogeneous isomorphism with life.While discussing the surface meaning,there is neither absolute differences between literary language and everyday language,between literary language and scientific language,nor structural differences between literary texts and everyday texts,between literary texts and texts of other subjects;in terms of in-depth meaning,literary form,though with some certain specialty,is neither a self-driven“discovery” nor an independent“invention”,but originates from the form of life.Therefore,supposing such standard is legal to identify literary genres,then the genre that network texts discussed above universally applied is this literary genre.For subject,literary activity is not their “ivory tower” but an organic part of their life.Its relevance is closer to social life than any relevance between social life and other subjects.First,the literature subjects will use the same set of mental models,emotional responses,feelings and experience previews to treat social life and literature,and fulfill their understanding,evaluation and feeling of social life into in literary activities.Second,the experiences,feelings and understandings in the literary activities will also affect their emotional reactions and behaviors while they have realized their roles as subjects in social life.In the literalized texts of other subjects and literary criticism the state of research and criticism is different both from the ration and subjectivity of other formal academic activities,but actually,acts as the personal and individual expression.This is in line with the subject features of literary activities.In conclusion,the types of texts above can be classified into the general conception of literature,so the close attention and intervene of literary studies are reasonable.The intervention of literature research is a subject that is worthwhile further exploration.At present,there are some intervention of the network literature research for reference.The interventional approaches can be instructive or participatory.Although instructive intervention presets advantages for elite standards,the diversity of Internet ranking criteria resolute the potential elite discourse power,while keeping its grade,so as to keep up with the “network democracy” and public carnival.Participatory intervention consists of such intervention as in the process of creativity,the elite writing on the Internet,and such intervention as in the process of acceptation,the discussion and interaction between the elites and netizens on the Internet platform on the subject of literature appreciation and criticism.The latter makes great use of the convenience of private media,which narrow the distance between elites and the mass.The transboundary and marginal texts discussed above,due to their links to the comprehensive cultural fields or the daily social life,are more likely to become the focuses in the interactions of the elites and the public.In conclusion,these interventions are of great significance for breaking through the “internal recycling” of literary and academic circle and connecting the academic accumulations with broader literature practice.