Writing Between Heaviness And Unrestrainedness: Condemnation, Exposure And Others

In the late Qing Dynasty appeared many crises, such as the survival crisis of the Chinese people, the political crisis of the feudal society and the traditional cultural crisis with the Confucian culture as the main stream. In such situations, the advanced Chinese intellectuals began to reflect on and seek the approach to saving the country and the people from the impending danger. In the literary world, reflecting the reality, condemning the social evils and saving the country became the basic proposition of the some advanced writers, who worried for their country. Especially, Liang Qichao advocated the theories of "revolution in the novel field" and "political novel" and writers with a strong sense of social responsibility tried to reveal the problems of the reality and develop the people's minds with the novel as tool so as to realize the goal of reforming the society. As a result, many "political novels" for enlightenment came into being. With the exception of works with "political comments" which directly expressed political ideal and publicized political proposition, many such novels were works of realistic political themes which mainly criticized the society and denounced the current evil practices through exposing corrupt officialdom. This paper calls them "novels with officialdom in the late Qing Dynasty as themes", which were typified by "the four condemnation novels" named by Lu Xun.This dissertation treats the novels with officialdom as themes as one independent category of novels in the late Qing Dynasty and by mainly discussing "the four condemnation novels", makes comprehensive research into their social backgrounds from appearance to prevalence, ideological values, literary and artistic values, historic position of literature, etc., focusing on extracting and understanding the thoughts and artistic values of the novel texts in combination with the social and cultural backgrounds of the late Qing Dynasty.With "the four condemnation novels" as examples, this dissertation generalizes the subjects of the novels with officialdom as themes in the late Qing Dynasty and holds the views that Exposure of the Official World and Odd Things Witnessed Over Twenty Years laid special emphasis on the comprehensive exposure of the corrupt officialdom, providing readers with the complete and rich living pictures of officialdom, their subjects being quite comprehensive, that The Travels of Lao Can focused on writing about right and wrong and through exposing and criticizing tyranny and cruel officials, showed the author's ethical value of officialdom, and that A Flower in a Sea of Sins centered on the value of usefulness and uselessness and through the description of the harms caused by selection of officials by imperial civil examination, proved the feudal officials' incompetence and uselessness and negated the value of officialdom with selection of officials by imperial civil examination as contents, the subjects of The Travels of Lao Can and A Flower in a Sea of Sins being more concentrated and monotonous.This dissertation is divided into five parts, the main body being classified into four chapters: "causes for prevalence of novels with officialdom as themes in the late Qing Dynasty as themes", "the social and cultural problems touched by novels with officialdom in the late Qing Dynasty as themes" , "exploration into the literary characteristics of novels with officialdom in the late Qing Dynasty as themes" and "the connotation of the literary history and evaluation of novels with officialdom in the late Qing Dynasty as themes". In summary, the dissertation mainly discusses the following aspects:First, the novels with officialdom in the late Qing Dynasty as themes touched the wide scope of the social and cultural problems and their ideological connotations were rich. They exposed the darkness and corruption of the late Qing Dynasty in a comprehensive way and negated and criticized the political system of feudal despotism, administration of local officials, economy and culture, etc. With the whole society of the late Qing Dynasty as the background, they revealed the disorder and corruption of officialdom as well as the degeneration and unscrupulousness of officials when the imperial court of the late QingDynasty was crumbling, the feudal system was disintegrated and the country and the people were humiliated. They showed the complete despair and strong dissatisfaction for the government of the late Qing Dynasty and deep anxiety about the fate of the country and the people, expressed the urgent wish to seek reform and change as well as civilization ideal and contained strong national feeling and cultural reflection consciousness. The dissertation makes a deep investigation into and complete arrangement of the economic factors seldom mentioned in the previous works so that it enriches the research achievements of the literature of the late Qing Dynasty to a certain degree.Second, this dissertation makes full research into the literary characteristics of novels with officialdom in the late Qing Dynasty as themes. Under the literary ecological environment of the late Qing Dynasty in which new works of various subjects and styles appeared one after another, the novels with officialdom in the late Qing Dynasty as themes were unique. Explicit as well as outstanding in style, they showed many good merits in the literary characteristics and literary achievements. From the perspective of the literary contents, the novels displayed the wide social life backgrounds connected with officialdom and created many figures of officialdom, which made the historic breakthrough and greatly enriched the Chinese literary figures. In the light of literary form, they included many new elements which transcended the traditional literature in structure, narration pattern and some other artistic representations, embodying the development course of the Chinese literature from the classical one to the modern one and displaying the distinctive features of times. The dissertation thinks that works were very free and explicit in expression without scrupulosity, which was mainly manifested in daring satire and imprecations, unconstrained exaggeration and derision, distorted jokes, scandals, description of typical figures, etc. showing scorn and contempt to the society and officialdom of the late Qing Dynasty to the extreme degree. Such sharp and strong style adapted to the need of revealing thoughts and feeling, which above reproach.Third, this dissertation puts forward the concept of classification of novels with officialdom in the late Qing Dynasty as themes, stressingthat novels with officialdom in the late Qing Dynasty as themes are considered as the beginning of novels with officialdom as themes. The novels with officialdom as themes occupied number one in the novels of various themes in the late Qing Dynasty. Although the novels with officialdom in the late Qing Dynasty as themes have long been named "condemnation novels" without clear concept of classification, they appeared and prevailed for some time in the late Qing Dynasty, which was an objective fact. For a long time, condemnation novels have been regarded as achievements and representatives of the Chinese literature in the late Qing Dynasty and even in the whole modern Chinese literature, which fully proved that novels with officialdom in the late Qing Dynasty as themes were quite mature in thought and art. This dissertation does deep analysis of their classification connotation and meaning.Fourth, the dissertation discusses the historic significance of literature and literary position of novels with officialdom in the late Qing Dynasty as themes. The novels with officialdom in the late Qing Dynasty as themes, publicly holding the banner of fight against the feudal despotism in the modern literary history, first completely uncovered the heavy and "sacred" curtain concealing the feudal officialdom for thousands of years, revealed the mystery of officialdom, broke the writing taboo subject from which men of letter flinched back for thousands of years and for the first time, depicted true ugly pictures of officialdom for readers. Novels really recorded and reflected the special history of the late Qing Dynasty and contained profound patriotic thought, rich ideas of reform and clear-cut modern consciousness. They are of literature values for social history, ideological history, cultural history and literary history, making the modern Chinese novels occupy the irreplaceable role in the history of Chinese literature.