Literature Prospect Under Shock And Influence Of Visual Culture

The dissertation investigates the pictorial trend of Chinese Literature at the turn of the century from visual culture perspective in order to hold the influence of the pictorialization of literature on the existence and development of literature in the era of visual culture.The dissertation has six parts. The following is the main content:The introduction shows two subjects. The first subject puts forward the perspective of the visual culture. Firstly, it introduces the academic background of the problem researched. The coming of the consume society and the spread of the consume culture provides the breeding ground for the rise of the visual culture. The development of science and technology especially the mass media provides a distribution platform for the visual culture's dissemination. Human instinctive visual demand and desire provides internal driving power for the visual culture's development. Literature encounters survival dilemma under shock of the visual culture. After falling off from center to edge, the pictorialization of literature is the strategy to survival and development for literature. Secondly, it points out two key words: "Visual Culture" and "Visuality". Visual Culture is a image culture form compared with the language culture which regards the picture as the basic symbol expressing the meaning, the mass media as the main medium and the visuality as the core. It includes both the static picture and the dynamic image. Visuality is a visual mechanism that makes the things from invisible to visible. It concludes not only structural relation of seeing and being seen but also interaction between system and discourse which produce the subject of viewing and visual field of seeing and being seen as well. Finally, it combs the current situation studied on this proposition and expounding the study method and meaning of this dissertation. The second subject differentiates and analyzes the relevant theory category of visual culture and language culture, visual culture and mass culture. Visual culture is different from language culture, but they are not incompatible. On the contrary, visual culture needs to deepen intension and promote taste by means of language culture. There is something not only in common but also in difference between visual culture and mass culture. Compared with mass culture, the content of visual culture is more abundant. It concludes both classical visual artistic works and some mass culture modes represented by drawing books, movie Tv, advertisement and cartoon. All those show that visual culture has dispelled the demarcation line between elite's culture and popular culture.The first chapter is the research about the "picture text". It has explained the pictorialization of literature materially from three respects of literature periodical, literary publishing and the adaptation from the novels to movies & TV plays. Literature actively absorbs visual factors such as picture, photo, movie TV from visual culture to rich itself. Literature periodicals pay more attention to the graphic design of front cover, increase more pictures and set up column about visual culture. In the literary publishing circle, "picture books" are liked by many readers and occupy the half of the market. The novels are adept to movies & TV plays and sell well. It has entered the industry chain of film-television culture. In addition, pictures provide art space and aesthetic characteristics for the literature. Literary works show dynamic sense of frame, aesthetic of conflict and realm of wonderfulness by means of drawing lessons from narrative skills of film-television and cartoon, which increases reading pleasure and sentiment. Compared with the traditional "illustrated edition", contemporary "picture books" changes relationship between pictures and characters. In the past, pictures were recognized as "assistant" to characters. Now, pictures go side by side with characters .They shoulder the duty of literary narrative commonly, which build the polyphony aesthetic effect of the interaction of "language-picture".The second chapter is the research about the "text picture". It has explained the pictorialization of literature spiritually from three kinds of literary phenomena of "new generation", "the fictions written by the writers bom in 70s stepped" and "nostalgia for shanghai". Image culture stinking the sensory aesthetics, the spatial aesthetics and the simulation aesthetics has a potential and penetrative influence on literary creation. It results in change quietly of aesthetic taste and spiritual temperament of literature. Literature presents more and more popularization and secularization trend. The sensory aesthetic which stimulates people' desire by means of intuitive and perceptual pictures infiltrating into literature has brought prevalence of desire narrative in "new generation". Take Zhu Wen, Han Dong for example, they apply micro-politics of desire to literary creation to overturn and clear up the traditional ethical morals and values by means of stinking inherent body desire. The narrative strategy is to experience stream of emotion and desire through migration. The spatial aesthetic which uses montage to narrate and stresses on space consciousness but desalinates time consciousness infiltrating into literature has brought prevalence of superficiality narrative in "the fictions written by the writers born in 70s stepped". Take Wei Hui, Mian Mian for example, they disenchant "Father" but enchant "West" and indulge in material and sensory stimulation, which lead to absence in historical memory and national memory. "Schizophrenic writing" that breaks the chain of time, rejects deep meaning and pays more attention to describe the material and sensory is its narrative strategy. The simulation aesthetics which brings people super-real feeling by producing many illusive simulations infiltrating into literature has brought prevalence of virtual narrative in "nostalgia for shanghai". Take Cheng Naishan , Chen Danyan for example, they describe the mirror image of city of Shanghai by means of reappearing the style and features of the 1930s-shanghai which to meet the rising bourgeoisie's culture-identity and reminiscent mood. The narrative strategy is that writers arrive at the historical site or use old photos to build scene feeling after selection and filtration.The third chapter discusses the relationship between the picture and the power in the literature field. It has analyzed the ways of seeing in Chinese literary field at the turn of the century based on three kinds of literary hot spots of "Body writing", "Petty bourgeoisie writing" and "Beauty writing" in order to reveal Visuality that is hidden in all literary visual behaviors. In literary field, gender power, consume power and market power all makes full use of picture's "eyeball economic effect" to realize their ideological purposes. "Body writing" led by Lin Bai, Chen Ran tries to escape the control of the man right culture by means of showing the feminism consciousness. But the man right culture gets entangled with market power and media power to let the female images keep being seen by means of reading as a man and commercial tamper. Besides, it calls other female writers through ideology in order to make them identify the male as watching subjects. The result of the call is that "pseudo-body writing" represented by Wei Hui, Mian Mian, Mu Zimei and Jiu Dan prevails in the literary circles and women fall in masculine culture trap. "Petty bourgeoisie writing" represented by Anne Baby is guided by consumptive ideology and exploded by mass media and then emerges vaguely. It builds a warm and dolorous "petty bourgeoisie world" by writing three kinds of complexes of literature, city, west and creating three kinds of emotions of elegant, romance, sentiment and describes the spicial "urban sensibility" of petty bourgeoisie who live in the international metropolis as well, which meets the petty bourgeoisie's psychological demands of identity and individuality expression. As a collusive product of literature and market, "beauty writing" from naming, writing to packaging and sensationalization permeates business logic and embodies the evolution of the literature under the circumstance of market economy typically. Under the entanglement and conspiracy of powers above mentioned, the aesthetic significance of literature is eliminated and reconstructed by capital logic. Pleasure and desire replace aesthetic experience and consumption symbols replace spirit symbols to control people, which makes literature' transcending value and criticism value fade gradually.The fourth chapter analyzes the literary secret worries from two aspects of literary writing and literary reading in read-image era. As far as writing is concerned, hyperreality made by virtual electronic simulations deconstructs the artistic reality. Mechanical reproduction coming from culture industry conflicts with literary original creation. All these result in deficiency of reality and originality. Literature is far away from real life and true feelings, which leads to literary phenomena of imitative writing, copy, collage and self-repetitions prevail not only among main aspect writers but also youth writers. In literature reading, because of transformation from paper medium to electronic medium, traditional literary readers begin to differentiate and reading screen and network replaces reading books and then traditional literary classics are neglected. From reading books to watching visuals, traditional readers' thinking mode, aesthetic taste and subject position are rebuilt, which results in that fast food culture and superficial-reading begin to popularize and readers' creativity and imagination are oppressed and deprived.The last part is the review and conclusion. It points out that because the visual culture is a developing culture and the literature pictorialization has been in the researching and starting stage, there is the ill-tendency of pictures deviating from characters or pictures oppressing characters that appears in the process of the literature' image conversion. For the healthy development of literature in the image society and forming a aesthetic space that there is a favorable interaction between characters and pictures, it must arrive two-point consensus: firstly, we should be positive to cope with the coming of the age of visual culture and establish completely new paradigm and discourse systems of literary criticism. Secondly, we must always not only adhere to the spirit of visual culture that pictures and characters are interactive but also guard securely literariness to breakthrough mirror-city' illusiveness and desire, which can bring the proliferation of aesthetic of picture text.