"Pastoral Its Surface,Elegiac Its Interior"—A Study Of The Modernity Of The Abolished Novel

Fu Ming is a unique writer in the history of Chinese literature.At a time when Chinese and Western cultures were colliding and national conflicts were at their fiercest,he persisted in cultivating his own literary garden,relating to his time in a unique way.This ’uniqueness’ is not limited to his creation of a harmonious utopia,but also lies in the fact that,based on his personal experience,Fei Ming formed a unique construction of Chinese literary modernity.In his novels,he explores resources from traditional culture and makes creative use of Western literary resources,constructing modernity in a way that is ’pastoral on the surface and elegiac on the inside’.This essay attempts to discuss the modernity of Fei Ming’s fiction from four perspectives.The first chapter discusses the cultural-psychological structure of Fei Ming’s novels.The cultural-psychological structure of Fei Ming’s novels is linked to traditional culture and inseparable from the real-life context;the war and strife of the1930 s led Fei Ming to rediscover the truth of traditional Confucianism in rural China,and to alleviate the anxiety of the lack of cultural traditions brought about by modernization,he had to return to the folklore and search for the true essence of traditional Chinese culture.Secondly,Fei Ming’s love of Meditation and Taoism,as a form of cultural engagement,also had a great influence on his fictional work.It is this cultural psychological structure that creates the representation of Fei Ming’s modernity writing: ’pastoral songs on the surface,elegiac songs on the inside’.The second chapter discusses the external characteristics of the modernity of Fei Ming’s novels-’to be dressed up in a wash of light’.Although life in Fei Ming’s novels is bitter,he does not depict the hardships of life,but instead uses a lighter plot and a child’s point of view to write about the everyday life of his characters and nature,forming a harmonious atmosphere.The third chapter discusses the external characteristics of the modernity of Fei Ming’s novels-"to make sense of my sorrow".He is concerned with reality,yet dissatisfied with it.He hopes to recreate a spiritual home in the countryside and find a way out of rural China.Therefore,it is too general to summarise Fei Ming’s fictional work solely in terms of ’poetic fiction’;it is only by looking behind the freshness and poetry of Fei Ming’s tears that his creative attitude of ’making sense of my sorrow’can be met.The fourth chapter discusses the significance of modernity in the creation of Ru Ming’s novels.The modernity of Fei Ming’s novels is reflected in his modernity,as he receives both Chinese and Western literary resources,uses traditional Chinese literary tropes and borrows Western literary techniques,and reflects on the radical "total westernization" of the May Fourth period.His fictional works inherited from traditional literature and also influenced writers of the Beijing school such as Shen Congwen and Wang Zengqi,showing the value of Fei Ming in literary creation as an inheritor of the past and the future.