Language Controversy And The Writers Of The Modern Chinese Experience

The present dissertation chooses the second ten years of the contemporary literature as the research object, that is, from the later period of 1920s to the eve of the war of Resistance against Japanese Aggression. During this period the Vernacular Movement (1917-1919) has gained a firm foothold and there existed divergence of views on language within the Vernacular Movement as a new idea about language appeared suddenly and produced the split-flow implosively, the language in four major literary forms of novels, poems, prose and dramas gradually developed and the preeminent contemporary writers in the history of contemporary literature created in succession their most representative works.VolumeⅠmainly examines the points at issue of the intellectuals in the public sphere which centered on the "public language" and confrontation of ideas of diversified views on language; Choosing four representative authors—Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren, Wen Yiduo and Sen Congwen, VolumeⅡexamines linguistic experience, linguistic ideas and linguistic imagination in their individual writing according to whether they have linguistic awareness and on the basis of considering the genre balance. What needs to be stated is that the genre factor is neglected when choosing Lu Xun because the genre delimitation are broken through in the relationship between Lu Xun and modern language, so the present dissertation chooses Lu Xun from the starting point of varied linguistic possibilities of the authors'writing. The other three authors—Zhou Zuoren, Wen Yiduo and Shen Congwen are the writing representatives of proses, poems and novels. Specifically speaking, linguistic imagination is focused on the research into Lu Xun. Of course, it is impossible to draw a clear demarcation between linguistic experience, linguistic ideas and linguistic imagination and sometimes overlapping description occurs. The dissertation focuses on VolumeⅡand VolumeⅠis the linguistic movement background and the theoretical base of linguistic theories. The objective is to examine the individual writer's unique mental history on "the way to language" based on the thorough understanding of the linguistic movement current during this period.It can be said to some extent that Lu Xun wrote Wild Grass for himself which it is a conversation made by himself and which is the linguistic adventure experienced from by Lu Xun in silence from the external social reality to the internal mental reality. On the way there is nothing but language to be company. He talked with himself and at the same time with language; he identified his being by means of talking with language and he directed to language by means of talking to himself. About Zhou Zuoren, we focus on Collections of Watching Clouds because it situated in a key position in the change of his linguistic ideas, from which we can obtain the context of his reflections on language and ideas about language. Dead Water, the representative work by Wen Yiduo, was the practical writing created with the "metrical poetry" idea. There are discussions about language, through which an investigation can be extended to modern Chinese from the starting period to the gradual muture period. Shen Congwen is a prolific writer and Border Town was the work in which the genre is most mature and linguistic imagination is most natural, mainly indicating in the integration of "reaching the objects" with "leaving the objects"; obtaining the meaning without abandoning language; straight and humorous, blank and elegant, poetic and authentic.Through an exploration of diversified views on language in the public sphere during this period and of experience of writers'individual contemporary Chinese language, a rough linguistic picture is presented in that times and it draws the outline of its internal connections with the former and the later periods, demonstrating the growth ring of the development of modern Chinese language from one profile, the interactive relationship between writers and modern Chinese, which provides a linguistic perspective and dimension for the narration of modern literature history, promoting the relationship between literature language to a deep understanding and realizing level with double sides, breaking through the limitation of language as a tool and arriving at the goal of "understanding Chinese in Chinese".