Analysis Of The Literary Motivations Of Wang Meng

The thesis discusses the literary motivations of Wang Meng, that is, the stable things lurking behind the changing styles and varieties of different forms of his works. This self-consciousness guides him to go onto the road of literature, and becomes the inner motivations of his continuous writing after 20 years' discontinuity. This self-consciousness also decides the main characteristics of the pattern and style of his writings.Chapter One reviews the previous researches of Wang Meng's works so as to analyze the way Wang Meng gets reputation in Chinese contemporary literature, the judgment on his works, the literary expectations of critics on his achievements and limitations, and what Wang Meng gets and loses in these researches. First, this Chapter reviews one of Wang's novels. In the 1950s, Wang Meng wrote a novel which catered for the main stream of the literature trend, and it helped him to get reputation in his twenties. Second, this Chapter examines the influence of Wang Meng's six experimental novels. In early 1980s, with the publication of his six experimental novels, critics and Wang Meng started a new trend of literature that challenged the classic realism writing pattern by means of "compromising fight", and this enabled him to be unforgettable in the history of literature. Last but not least, this Chapter reviews the critical view of his works. The criticism includes pointing the limit of stable style, the limit of political and cultural position, and the limit of Personality. However, all the researches do not care who Wang Meng is. Why did his works show these characteristic? This is where the thesis starts.Chapter Two analyzes Wang Meng's main literary motivation:master consciousness. This consciousness lies in two aspects and they are superiority and anxiety. The superiority represents differently in three stages:in his youth, there was a pattern of solving all the problems; in the 1980s, he monopolized the rights of history reflection, and his novel was full of argument rather than narration; in his old days, he enjoyed playing as a wise old man with authority. His anxiety represented as being afraid of getting outdated and getting out of the main society. This aspect of consciousness decides his life choices including choosing literature, going to Xinjiang in the 1960s, and going inside the political right.Chapter Three discusses the depressed consciousness of Wang Meng:the impulse of desecrating. This impulse is depressed by the effect of ideology and his fear for the punishment from the political power. The impulse is composed of three different stages:in the 1950s, it represented in his novel as partial humors breaking the whole unity; in the 1980s, it represented as plenty of humors and ironies, but with the target on the opposite side of the revelation; in the 1990s, it appeared in his consciousness, he desecrated the revolution in public. However, in his deep consciousness, Wang Meng still could not clear away the effect of ideology and the fear for the punishment from the political power.Through the analysis in the above three Chapters, it can be concluded that the main literary motivation of Wang Meng is Master Consciousness, which lies in two aspects:superiority and anxiety deciding his works and life choice. Moreover, there is a depressed impulse of desecrating as another motivation, which results in his humorous and ironic characteristics of writings.