The Sinking As A Literary Event And The Literary Life In The Early Period Of New Literature

Shanghai Taidong Press published Yu Dafu’s collection of short stories called Sinking in October 15,1921,it caused great repercussions in the whole society.It received praise also criticism,and became a representative literary event,eventually became a hot topic in the initial stages of China’s new literature,and played an important role in the social spiritual life.Moreover,the sensational effect caused by the controversy of the collection formed a kind of Sinking phenomenon,which led the collection to be not just a literary text,but a social text.The inevitability behind the contingency and the complex internal model are worthy of attention and inquiry.At the same time,literary works do not exist alone,but can achieve reconstruction in the dynamic process of literary production,literary publishing,literary reading and literary consumption.Therefore,this thesis attempts to break previous research framework from writer to work,instead of paying attention to the reading psychology of ordinary readers,and use Sinking as an entry point to explore the two-way interaction between individuals and society,in order to restore reading style and literary life at the center of Sinking in the initial stages of China’s new literature.The entire thesis is divided into four chapters based on its logic structure.Chapter one mainly discusses the birth of Sinking,its spread network and great social influence.Firstly,the thesis chooses several novels of Sinking and contrasts with other typical literary texts,examines their relationships to find potential factors in the process of literary production.Secondly,the thesis examines the cultural atmosphere and guiding role of readers of Sinking by showing readers’ acceptance of two foreign literary translation works.Thirdly,the thesis utilizes a large number of historical data to restore the historical scene,and shows that the collection played a structural role in literary youth’s social and spiritual life.Chapter two aims to outline the historical and cultural situation in the early period of the new literature in the context of the reception of the collection in 1921.Firstly,the thesis investigates the real literary situation at that time in the context of Shen Yanbing’s Short Story Magazine and Saturday’s re-publication,and shows the cultural psychology of readers in the process of cultural competition between the old and the new factions.Secondly,the thesis examines the new sense and cultural choice of the publishers of Shanghai Taidong Press and the Commercial Press.They were struggling to find a balance point and have foreshadowed the readers’ reading reaction.Thirdly,the thesis discusses the opposition and separation of individuals and society in the old and new turning times,and then examines the readers’ reading experience about sex and politic.We can find that their cultural anxiety was immersed in cultural advancement and cultural authenticity,and the readers re-established contact with society in the process of reading.Chapter three explores the same emotions and psychology of the writer and his readers.Firstly,the thesis examines the cultural psychology of the writer from the scholarly class to the intellectual class,and the writer’s special cultural identity made him a spiritual mentor of his readers.Secondly,the thesis explores Yu Dafu’s cultural situation when he returned to China,revealing his inner spiritual connection with the novel’s hero and literary youth.Thirdly,the thesis examines the cultural strategy of Yu Dafu as an editor,and explores the cultural characteristics of the weak outside the strong cultural identity of the writer,and restores the model from the weak to the hero.In the fourth chapter,combined with professional readers’ criticism,the thesis focuses on several controversial topics under the perspective of works and readers,and the readers’ acceptance of ordinary readers based on the young readers is discussed.Firstly,the thesis reveals the fusion of horizons between the writer and readers by showing general readers’ reading experience which the novel’s protagonist is equal to the writer.The second section discusses the professional readers’ view of soul and body,reflecting the ordinary readers beyond the field of vision.In the three discussions of sexual morality,the third section shows the petty bourgeois identities of ordinary readers to find their literary interest,and then they realized their cultural intentions of self-imagination.In the conclusion,this thesis shows that the social effect produced by Sinking are not only intended to restore a period of literary history at that time,but also to explore the possibility of the study of the history of Chinese modern literature through typical cases,and examines the significance of its new literary history.In the past,the writing of modern literary history usually ignored the process of production,communication and acceptance of literature.The discourse power was often grasped in the hands of a few professional scholars,and lacked the inquiry of the reading behaviors of ordinary readers.Also the interactive investigation between new literature and social life was less concerned about.This thesis is intended to highlight the study of literary life,and it will make up for this defect to a certain extent,so that the history of literature in the whole society will be more three-dimensional and real.