Cultural Attention Of Wang Anyi's Novel

The study of the literature from the aspect of culture is just in its beginning period, the sense of it is to understand culture from literature's aspect, to explain culture from literature's aspect.Wang Anyi, many of whose works got attracts of the critics, is an outstanding writer nowadays. We can say that she is not the starter of some literature, but in almost every trend of literature, her works gave great support of the thought, even became the top of the period that other writers could not exceed, so there are a lot of researches on her works. It is found that, Wang Anyi, effected by tracking cultural root, discuss a lot on human nature and life from the aspect of culture, starting her work XIAO BAO ZHUANG, but the literature critics gave very little attention on this aspect. This essay will give some cultural analyses on some of her important representative works, so that we can have a new understanding of her works from the aspect of culture.1, XIAO BAO ZHUANG: A picture of various living waysFrom the mid of 1980, the trend of tracking culture root start in Chinese literature. Facing the conflict of the west and east culture, some writer started to track the ROOT of Chinese traditional culture which was different from the west. From this background, Wang Anyi, just came back from her US trip, wrote the work XIAO BAO ZHUANG, which reflect the folk culture of the country side where she used to live before. The people in this novel were educated under Confucianism and did things under it, but their human nature showed a lot of conflicts to Confucianism. Various living ways were showed in this work.Wang Anyi showed us complex human nature of XIAO BAO ZHUANG's pleple in 3 aspects. First, people suffered the bitter life caused by traditional culture and modern culture's conflict; second, the failure of the Confucianism when it met the human nature, except a few sages; last, the died of Lao Zha, who represented the kindness and justice of human nature, is the symbol of the disappearing of kindness and justice. From all these, the writer gave great attention on XIAO BAO ZHUANG people's life statues, worried about the lost of humanitarianism.2, LOVE IN SMALL TOWN: Discussion about natural status of lifeA set of novel focus on sex written by Wang Anyi during mid 1980 caused great discussion in critics. Because SEX could not be accepted by traditional Chinese culture. The writers described sex just under the aspect of society, but a lot of sex as the living life was showed in this set her sex-love novels. LOVE IN SMALL TOWN is the representation In this work, Wang Anyi told the route of dramatis personae's sex understanding, from the first sex consciousness to sex confusion, from sex discovering to the birth of new life, two lovers went to totally different living way. It showed us, in modern society, the culture is losing, variety of young lover, who is enjoying their sex love, showed us the great living energy, the secrets of life.3, UNCLES'S STORY: The lost of spiritWhen talking about her one year not writing period before writing UNCLE'S STORY, Wang Anyi said: "Facing the every thing was destroyed, she was in the great pain caused by Weltanschauung's ruining." This pain came from intelligentsia. Uncle in the novel is a clerisy who had suffered the great pain caused by Culture Revolution, he regarded himself as a great hero who had a rich painful experience, but his figure was destroyed after several description, in the end, the truth that he was a historic loser were showed, who had no belief, no responsibility, no hope. The writer wanted to show the sprit crisis of the intelligentsia in that period of time, losing their sprit and personality.4, CHANG HEN GE: Description on Shanghai women's soulAs a female writer living in Shanghai for many years, Wang Anyi knows Shanghai and the women live there very well, so she could tell the sprit of Shanghai and the soul of Shanghai women in her great CHANG HEN GE. The female in Shanghai is the soul of this city, they are f...