Self Awareness And Self Control Captured In Portraying Self And Self Narrating: Analysis Of The Self Narration Novels

The kind of "self-narration novels" is a literary phenomenon and narrating style, which was prevailing during the May 4th Movement and 1920s. From then on, its uniqueness has been becoming a great concern in the academic literary circle. Studying on the past achievements in this field, we found that there remains problems awaiting solving: on the one hand, we may only find out the isolated reviews of the writing style of an individual writer, rather than find out the comparative and systematic analysis of the group writers in this field; on the other hand, we may only find out these novels are randomly classified into the stream of subjective lyricism and self expression dominated by romanticism and individualism, rather than find out the practical and penetrating analysis of these works. With the consideration of the spiritual features in the era, this paper focuses on the analysis of the "self-narration novels" during the May 4th Movement and 1920s, especially the analysis of their subjects, of their selections of narrative styles and, of the psychological effects of narration.Apart from Introduction and Conclusion, this paper consists of the main parts from Chapter 2 to Chapter 4.Chapter 2, entitled "Portraying Self: Self of Problems and Novels of Self Narration", describes the bewilderment and misery of the New Youth generation, since, under the fetters of conventional ideas and the pressure of realistic difficulties, the recovery of their self consciousness brings them the feeling of "no way out after waking up from dreams". It is the problems of self that haunt the New Youth generation and that become the subjects they eagerly express. Therefore, these novels, describing the self of problems, have developed to be the "self-narration novels". More strictly speaking, such novels are a kind of "self-problem novels", which actually belong to a sub-type of "literature of problems" developed from the May 4th Movement, but not belong to the so-called self-expression novels or subjective lyric novels within the tradition of romanticism.Chapter 3, entitled "Self Narration: Individualized Narration of Self Problems", illustrates the two strategies adopted in narrating self problems, which are found out by the New Youth generation to express their personal feelings and to attempt to achieve the authentic and expressive effects. The first strategy is to express one' feelings directly by using the first person narration in novels, even expose one's privacy by using the private styles, such as the diary form, letter form and manuscript form. The second strategy, indirectly, uses the third person narration, in which various symbols of self take the main role in turns, reveal the innermost feelings to each other and, listen attentively to each other. From this view, self-narration novels can be thought, to a great extent, as an individualized narration, which plays a pioneering role in the history of Chinese literature. Such a pioneering literary technique demonstrates both the precious frankness and sincerity and the literary immaturity. Chapter 4, entitled "Self Awareness and Self Control Captured in Self Narration Novels", elaborates, from the point of view of the psychology studying on the issue of self, that self narration novels are simply the means adopted by the New Youth generation to seek for self awareness and self control. Through portraying self and self narrating, the bewilderment, depression, as well as morbidness, become alleviating, self-controlling and sublimating. As a matter of fact, self-narration novels are the sort of true-story-based and credible autobiographies, which describe the worries in the process of growth of the New Youth generation, who lived their lives in a culturally and socially changing era. This is probably why the self-narration novels, with their unique taste of delicacy, became popular during their days and even have been handed down and read till today.