Centenary Youth Files

The 20th century Chinese literature is closely related with "youth". The centenary history of the Chinese literature and the centenary history of the Chinese youth are complementary to each other. The writer thinks that it is a new visual angle to understand the literary history by studying the youth history and understand the youth history by studying the literary history, which has a methodological meaning to some extent. Based on this understanding, the dissertation attempts to put forward an idea of "youth criticism" in the introduction. The introduction "An Access to the Youth Archives" not only provides the background materials of "youth" for the main parts, but also has a preliminary conclusion and reflection on the colorful "youth culture" of the 20th century Chinese society. Because of the tendency of small-sized families in China in the past hundred years, the relationship between generations of the family changes along with that. The change from "departmentalism of the old" to "departmentalism of the young" becomes a common tendency. The writer believes that "culture of the "old" should not be conflicted with "culture of the young". Youth is a complex paradox, both beautiful and terrible.The main parts "the Thematic Connotation of Youth Files" research on the 20th century Chinese novels from the aspect of thematics, attaching importance to the carding of the motive of youth and the theme history of youth, exploring the rich connotation of nation, society, culture and literature on the youth theme and probing the rules and reasons of its developmental change in the centenary literature history. The writer defines "youth" as a living condition of constant growing up "on the road", comprising both physical and spiritual growing up. The spiritual growing up is more important and difficult. It is the spiritual growing up that finally makes people experience "the ceremony of the adult " in a real sense. From the research of archetype and psychoanalysis of the ceremony of the adult, the model "adolescent -trial -grown-up" is the archetype model of growing up, while "obedience -depression - relief is a mental track in the process of growing up. On the road of growing up, the adolescents experience all kinds of difficulties and become mature, which has a gratifying aspect, while in the process of growing up, the loss of merits and the regrets in the adult world always make them yearn for the adolescent times, even regret maturing too early, thereby forming a profound paradoxical growing up. In the history of the 20th century Chinese novels, there rarely exists "Bildungsroman" (German) in a strict sense. However, there exist a great number of novels concerning "the growing up theme" of youth. The main parts focus on "growing up", namely, "the general theme" of youth and they have a respective study on the theme of "ideal of youth", "worship of youth", "rebellion of youth", "wander of youth", "decadence of youth", and "love of youth " which have a very close relation with "growing up of youth." (Because of the restriction of the space, the specific study conclusions of eachchapter are not listed here.) The rest parts mainly focus on the contents of "spiritual growing up". The spiritual direction of "growing up" in the rest parts can be regarded as the brief conclusions of the youth theme. "Spiritual growing up" in a narrow sense can be finished during the period of the youth while "spiritual growing up" in a broad sense is not only the problem of the young, but also the problem of human's developmental direction which is confronted in the adult society, thus, rich in philosophical connotation.The 20th century Chinese literature constantly explores the great historic subjects of reforming the national characteristics and remoulding "the national soul". "Centenary youth files" in the literature record "the characteristics of youth" during the different periods and creates some ideal "images of youth". Of course, some distressing "decadent" images of youth are also left over as bad examples. These "char...