The Study Of Labor Narration In Yan'an Literature

The alliance between labor and literature has been an important phenomenon since literature came into being.Since the turn of 20th century,the May Fourth and Left-wing literature writers have been dedicated to wirting labor,workers and peasant laborers based on the traditional agricultural economy and newly growing economy form,and also influenced by ' sacred labor' ideology.In the Yan'an Literature period,Chinese writers' focus on labor writing has showed prosperity,and many new qualitities appeared on the traditional foundation.This dissertation takes the labor narrive in Yan,an Literature as the main research object,comparatively scrutinizes the historical materials and literature texts currently available,and focuses on discussing the complex relationship between la'bor narrative and social history,political ideology and literary aesthetics,exploring the happening of labor narrative in Yan'an Literature,analysing and reflecting the series of characters who are closely related to labor,interpreting and analysing the influences of labor on economic relations,civil-military relations,cadre-mess relations and family relationships,and the generation of new ethics,at the same time dissecting the pluralistic aesthetic styles and aesthetic characteristics of labor narrative in Yan'an Literature.Besides introduction and peroration,this dissertation is divided into four chapters.The first partchapter "Reality and Tradition:the Happening of the Labor Narrative",discusses the happening of labor narrative in Yan'an Literature from the perspectives of social historical reality,ideological and cultural background,and the particular literary environment.All these facors like,the establishment of border region democratic regime,the growing position of laborers,the reform of economic system and Rectification Movement which seeks unity in thinking influenced Yan'an Literature writers' concern and cultural choice.And the production of self-help and construction movement launched by CCP in the specific peoriod provided much richer soil of reality.The physiocracy in China's traditonal culture,Marxism which is the source of CCP's political theory,and CCP leader Mao Zedong's unprecedented emphasis and admiration of labor has constituted together the important cultural background and ideological source for Yan'an Literature composers to be keen on labor narrative.Moreover,the artistic policy of combining with the masses,diversified literary creation groups and the reception groups mainly oriented to workers,peasants and soldiers,also contributed to the wide generation and existing form of labor narrative in Yan'an Literature.The second chapter"Self-reinvention:the Image Construction in the Labor Narrative",sorts out three types of images closely related to labor,summarizes the narrative patterns of model workers and rascals,and explains the meaning and function of labor and instruments of labor to reshaping the identity of intellectuals.Firstly,labor in Yan'an Literature created the new image of model workers with distinctive characteristics of that era,among whom the female model worker were more eye-catching.The image of model workers refreshed people's cognition of heros and labor,and also played an important part in laborers' shaping new self.Meanwhile,a trend of modularization in the image of model workers had been evident due to the regulation of ideology,however.Secondly,labor rewrote the image of rascals since May Fourth literature,and could be regarded as an important way to reshape rascals into'good person',The image of rascals here also followed a certain narrative pattern due to ideology.Thirdly,labor reshaped the image of intellectuals,who were downgraded from the enlighteners in May Fourth literature to the transformed persons in Yan'an Literature.During the process of transformation labor is an important way for these intellectuals to reshape themselves and become proletarian workers.The third chapter"Exchanging the Old for the New:Ethical Imagination in the Labor Narrative",discusses the influence of labor on the economic relation,civil-military relations,cadre-mess relations and family relationships,and also the generation of new ethics.The newborn independent and collective labor form had a great impact on the unfair class ethics in the relations between landlord and tenants and industrial relations in old society,building a new ethics of collectivism in the new-democratic society.Under the guidance of social political movement and relavant policies,labor narrative in Yan'an Literature promoted a new type of civil-military relation of cooperation and harmony,and a new type of cadre-mess relation which insisted on the mass line.But literaure here acted more as the mouthpiece of politics,and thus largely obscured artistic creators' unique thinking of politics.Labor narrative also rewrote the traditional family relations between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law,husband and wife,brother and sister,and sisters-in-law,and focused on building the new family ethics of hardworking,equal,and harmonious in the vast historical and political background,which had some modern significance and to some extent,also showed conversion to traditional ethics which met the needs of the ages.The fourth chapter "the Bright Main Color:Aesthetic Aspects of the Labor Narrative",gives a brief analysis of the aesthetic characteristics of labor narrative in Yan'an Literature.Labor aesthetics in Yan'an Literature presented pluralistic aesthetic styles,with bright,beautiful and joyful as the dominant tone,bitterness as a foil,sublime as the mainstream accompanied by some cases of graceful.Labor aesthetics in Yan'an Literature developed the sublime beauty of grand,magnificent,pure and powerful,meanwhile the cases of graceful represented by Sun Li enriched its aesthetic expressions in another direction.However,it is worth mentioning that both sublime and graceful has more or less connection with political ideology.Overall,in the labor narrative of Yan'an Literaure,there have been a lot of new development in image molding,ethics establishment and aesthetics expression,and meanwhile some artistic limitations like sterotype of characters,patterned plot structurand politicization of the aesthetic owing to.the influence and regulation of ideology.These development and limitations have been explicitly revealed in the labor narrative of Seventeen Years Literature.Thus these two stages have close relations,which still need to be explored further.