Understanding Feng Jicai

If we place Feng Jicai's literary work in chronological order since the Iatel970's, people might be surprised by the wide rang of topics, transformation of styles and uniqueness of his language of the novelette, all which distinguish him from most of his contemporaries. These are especially apparent in The Miraculous Pigtail and The Three-Inch Golden Lotus both published in the mid 80's. As the initiator of "Cultural Introspect Novelettes", his works has provoked a large-scale discussion in Chinese literary domain. Therefore, through this representative author of Chinese Post-Cultural Revolution, we can understand better the development of Chinese Contemporary Literature during the last quarter of the 20th Century in macro scope, and Feng's uniqueness as a novelist in microscope.This dissertation will first analyze the characteristics of Feng's realism in his earlier works. The Carved Pipe and Ah! won the annual "Best Short Story" and "Best Novelette" for their respective years and highlighted Feng's writing of "Scar Literature". The stories revealed the psychological scars of ordinary people caused by the red horror of the Cultural Revolution. However, their spirit was not depressed but rather strong and sparkled in pursuing the beauty of Art in the darkest period. Although the stories often sounded heavy and sad, the protagonists were hardly depressed. The plot usually is simply, the sense of art remains strong. This was the first characteristic of Feng's earlier writing. Then the writing process of The Decade Years of A Hundred People made Feng understand the essence of Lu-Xun's "Criticism of Chinese Mentality" (Guomin xing pipan). The novel revealed the worst part of Chinese mentality that was swelling and inflated under the Cultural Revelation. That is the second characteristic of Feng's early writing.It is not too exaggerated to call the Post-Cultural Revolution period "The Renaissance" because of the emancipations of Chinese ideology and literature. Feng's works chanted the new freedom of expressing and welcomed the return of Chinese Literature back to its humanist nature. His lyric language, perceptual and visualized with rich vocabulary suited very well to the content of his novelettes, especially when it described the different art forms. The French symbolic Poems were translated in this dissertation as comparisons in order to show the universality of aesthetics in literature.Feng's perspectives of narration in writing a novelette seem often unique and interesting due to his frequent shift within the same novelette. There are three most frequently used perspectives: l.the protagonist's prospective, 2. the writer's perspective, S.the audience's perspective. At the same time, suspense is the basic narrative method in Feng's novelettes. Thanks to Life is a passionate story with full of suspense. The kilning process of porcelain plates symbolizes the suspenseful life of the protagonist. Theamplified contingencies carrie the story forward in an intriguing fashion. Suspense also plays the key role in novelette Ah! In the Three-Inch Golden Lotus, mixed with absurdity and historical factors, suspense appeared with a new face.Feng is an accomplished painter; his efforts in transforming the concepts and techniques of Fine Arts, such as perspective, color, line and texture etc. into his visualized language were rather unique and effective. The perspective used in TheWindow to the Street made people think of the famous Dutch painter Vermeer's paintings which always had magical light from the window. Feng could magically "paint" with words and vocabulary. The "red" color in The Doubtful Fire Crackers is not the same as the "red" in The Mountain Carrier. The "earth tone" in The Music of Autumn is far distinguished from those in Thanks to Life. The colors come to life when Feng associated them with different textures of materials. For example, the textures of the "red" color in Doubtful Fire Crackers are both tangible and intangible: woman's red scarf, red fire crackers, burning passion of love,...