Revolution·History·Narration

The revolutionary historical novels occupied the predominant position in the Chinese literary creation during the seventeen years (1949-1966) after the founding of the People's Republic of China. These novels have served a decisive function for textual representation of the revolutionary history under the leadership of Communist Party of China, and meanwhile, become the profound memory of this historical period for generations. Based on the relationship between history and narration, this dissertation sets out to study the specific context in which these revolutionary historical novels came into being during 1950s and 1960s. Instead of emphasizing rereading the connotation of the texts, this paper focuses on the study of the generative processes of these texts, the way how they deal with history, the reason why they are done in that fashion, the motivation with which these texts have recounted the revolutionary history and the ideology under whose guidance the author have completed the textual organization of history. It can be said that the revolutionary history is a majestic narration in Chinese literary and artistic movements from 1950s to 1970s because it has not only constructed a sort of contemporary cognition and moral imagination, but also bestowed a specific spiritual character on several Chinese generations. Therefore, researching the general aspects, features and causes of the Chinese revolutionary historical narrations between 1950s and 1970s does not merely mean an analysis of the phenomenon of literary creations, but an observation of how a national ideology was formed in a particular historical era as well.This dissertation consists of six chapters. The first chapter, "The Establishment of Meaning", mainly studies the relationship between the revolutionary historical novels and the formation of the national ideology so as to anatomize the motivation with which these novels narrate the history and the referents of the signified of these novels. The second chapter, "Security of Meaning", focuses on the various factors which set rules and throw obstacles in the way of revolutionary historical novels in order to work out the narrative tendency of these novels and the relationship between their outward features and these factors. The third chapter, "Abstraction of Meaning", reveals the laws and the characteristics of the narrative construction of these novels chiefly through the observation of the particular creation processes of textual formation. The fourth chapter, "Tradition of Meaning", standing on the pure narrative logic of revolutionary historical novels, demonstrates the fundamental principles of narrative organization of these novels from two aspects, "the revolutionary justice" and "the leadership of Communist Party". The fifth chapter, "Diffusion of Meaning", chiefly investigates conditions of the circulation and diffusion of these novels after their completion. In other words, it is also a kind of observation and analysis of the means by which the meaning of the revolutionary historical narration have been reached. The sixth chapter, "Rereading and Reconstruction of Meaning", analyzes the way how the semantic system of the revolutionary historical novels and the history of revolution are being reread and reconstructed since 1990s, which is actually a summing-up and analysis of contemporary researching state about the revolutionary historical novels, and also a study on the deconstructive encounter of the original semantic system of these novels in the new cultural context. Although this paper merely makes the 17 years' revolutionary historical novels a target for research, this researching way is not without its inspirational significance for observation of generation and manipulation of the whole contemporary Chinese literature.