Western Ironic Poetics And Chinese Literature In The 20th Century

In the part of introduction, the author mainly deals with the significance and methodology of the research. The author holds that irony, an important poetics in the western literary theories, constitutes one of the most important concepts of forefront significance in the world literary research in the 20^th century.In the process of Chinese literary transformation over the past century, western literary theory exerted great influence on the Chinese literary creation, which employs and absorbs the ironic poetics. Particularly, some writers though have not directly read the theory works about irony, yet under the profound influence of irony emerging in the western literary works, they ,consciously or unconsciously, employ the ironic poetics in their works or compose their literary works from the perspective of irony.So we may come to the conclusion that the ironic poetics of western literary wielded far-reaching influence on the framework of Chinese literature in the recent 100 years which is totally new in terms of significance magnitude, thus becoming an outstanding mark of modernity in Chinese modern literature.In Chapter I, the author reviews and summarizes the introduction and studies as well as employ of ironic poetics in contemporary and modern Chinese literature synchronically. The author maintains that ironic poetics was introduced into Chinese literature in 1930's, and many writers accepted its influence from different sources.In the late 1980's, Chinese scholars turned more attention to the theoretical introduction of irony by analyzing the differences among ironies in New Criticism, Romanticism and Post Modernism. They also showed increasing interest in the employ of ironic poetics. Nevertheless the methodology of studying ironic poetics remains in the level of the rhetorical meaning of irony, few making efforts to explore the correlation between modern writers and ironic poetics in the level of world view and thinking mode. Therefore, there is great amount of theoretical room for researchers to tap in the relationship between ironic poetics and Chinese modern literature.Chapter II mainly deals with the correlation of Lunxun and western ironic poetics. In the authors opinion, the research work of Lunxun's literary world and spiritual world can be conducted from multi-perspectives and dimensions, while ironic poetics being an important academic perspective of great theoretical value.Lunxun mainly drew inspiration from the world view, life attitude and thinking mode of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. The greatness of Lunxun as an ironic writer lies that he was deeply aware of the remarks made by Kierkegaard that ironist is also the sacrifice needed in social development and that he regarded such kind of "sacrifice" as his unavoidable historical fate and made an overture as "history middleman" to the world by shouldering the responsibility of frontrunner.The thinking of Paradox becomes the essential trait of Lunxun's ironic thinking, even his whole set of thinking, which manifests all the way from his self -allegedly philosophical works WILD GRASS from his late works. Lunxun is undoubtedly "a man with eyes by which could see the subtle irony". Not only could he see the subtleness of irony, but also the irony of himself, the nihil world as well as the nihility itself, thus becoming a spiritual fighter against desperation.Chapter III and Chapter IV respectively discuss two fictionists Qian Zhongshu and Zhang Ailing and the relationship between them and the western ironic poetics. The author's opinion is that they were deeply influenced by western cultural tradition, thus they tended to adopt the ironic poetics to get satire, however, there are more rhetoric significance besides shift of perspective, absurdity, etc. Qian Zhongshu was affected by western existentialism, thus, irony became his general feeling of life in human being's tribulation. Fang Hongjian's life circles—the three appearances of "ship" in the Fortress Besieged, and old clock which can never follow the time are both such ironic images. Zhang Ailing, from a downfallen well-known conventional family, is born to be ironic. This irony comes from her western literary cultivation and her apperception of life's existence, by which she presented various historical circumstances and human nature in the 20^th century when China was taking a modern transformation, and presented some absurd situation, contradictions, and nothingness caused by existence, for example, her classical sentence, "life is a colorful dress, but covered by lice", is her most excellent irony against existence. Therefore, both Qian and Zhang bear a sharp insight as ironist, and their deep reflection on life and existence, their subjective awareness and individual color popped out from this reflection testify that their ironies come from both thought and existence. The contradictions reflected in their works are not for a specific period or a place or an individual or a certain group of people, but are very common. Nobody can be an exception. It's this basic contradiction that formulates the features of irony against the nature of human's existence.Chapter V discusses the relation between "Jiuye" poets and the western ironic poetics. The author thinks that the translation and introduction of the western ironic poetics take place under such a circumstances that the theoretical system is complete and the knowledge structure is systematic and the individual situations are in correspondence, therefore, they made great contribution to the introduction of modern significance of the western ironic poetics. Based on the ironic theories of the school of New Criticism in England in the 1930s, "Jiuye" poets in the poem history firstly put forward important principles of making new poems theatrical. The key idea of these principles is the use of contradiction and irony, which means to emphasize the elements of conflicts and make them inter-related and influence each others, in order to reach a final balance. On one hand, this irony enables the "Jiuye" poets to make a force of conflict inside the poems and enriches poems' language forms; on the other hand, writing ironic poems at a philosophical level, the poets can make use of contradiction, question existence, and consider the destruction of value in existence. Thus, "Jiuye" poets bridged the construction of Chinese modern poetry and the most advanced western poetry, and made a qualitative change in the modernization of Chinese new poetry.Taking Han Shaogong and Wang Xiaobo as examples, chapter VI discusses the influence of Kundera's ironic spirit to Chinese modern fictions. The author holds this opinion that the influence is firstly displayed when the thought and laugh is constructed with irony. In this merriment, an open, rich and vague ironic significance is constructed between true and false, strict and fun, the cross of time and space. In this circumstance of significance, the irony tears a crack with the force of laughter between appearance and truth. It is in this crack does the reader realize the nature of the world and the truth of existence. Then, this irony criticizes the vulgar things that people are accustomed to, that is to say, keeping a clear and wise distance from the surrounding world and peeling off the vulgar lyric appearance by irony and reproducing the abundance and vagueness of life. Thus, it not only enables people to keep a poetic life on earth, but also provides writers with an ecstatic profundity in subject and abundance in aesthetics.Taking modern avant-garde poetry as examples, chapter VII discusses the influence of western ironic poetics to Chinese modern poetry . The author holds the opinion that modern avant-garde poetry accept western ironic poetics under the language situation of post-modernism . Its basic characteristics lie in using ironies, games, carnival and ambiguity to deconstruct technical reason, suspecting historical reason with open attitude and non-definite original existence, and forming dissident power with spiritual individual's self-splitting, so as to achieve the free existence of independent poetry. It is just the presence of the western ironic poetics that makes modern avant-garde not a power of deconst ruction and destroy, as some critics say, but at the same time imply the creation of a fresh world full of poetry.To sum up, the author holds the opinion that the ironic poetics is a many-layered solid theoretical system, whose kernel is denial and subversion that combines the needs of destructing traditional culture and powerful language and thus boost the construction of poly-subjects in Chinese literature. Especially, since the basic way of using irony is by language, to get a allegorical effect via distorting the discourse will bring a fresh and sudden aesthetic feeling to people. In the modern period when the mass culture and the mirror culture is evolving to be the hegemony of the society and the common interest, media language and advertisement is making people's taste vulgar, modern Chinese literature holds its ground for its spirit and unique utterance with ironic poetics, a spiritual and tactful way of thinking, by opening out the characteristics of uniqueness, heterogeneity, self-discipline, criticism in historical subject when destructing the general conception of vulgarity and unilateralism.