The Conscious Awareness And Creation Practice Of Grotesque

This paper focuses on the grotesque that embodied in contemporary novels created by writers who have the consciousness of grotesque art. It is thought that from the 1980s to the beginning of new century, novelists represented by Wang Xiaobo, Mo Yan, Can Xue, Liu Zhenyun and Yu Hua have made remarkable changes in their writing concepts, techniques as well as aesthetic quality. By the mass use of abnormal writing techniques such as exaggeration, deformation and reversal, they have created a unique artistic style, absurd beauty which mainly contains ugliness and ridiculousness. Based on the interpretation of the works by those writers, this paper aims to make a summary of the absurd beauty according to their different ways of creation, explore the source of these grotesque, and finally to judge the value of the emergence of absurd beauty in Chinese literature history.This paper includes the introduction and other two parts from chapter1 to chapter 5.The introduction deals with the definition and research status of grotesque. This part mainly introduces the origin of absurd beauty, defines this notion, and reviews the research status at home and abroad. It first traces the naming of absurd beauty, and specifies the two basic ingredients-ugliness and ridiculousness. It has revealed the abnormal constitution of absurd beauty and summarized the funny and horrible reaction it brings to aesthetes. Then it reviews the research status concerning absurd beauty at home and abroad. As the theoretical study on absurd beauty started in the west and there is a relatively complete and mature system, this paper introduces the research in the west on the one hand and on the other hand, describes the process of translating, introducing and developing absurd beauty theory at home under the influence of western literary trends, especially expounds the existing research on absurd theory by domestic scholars. Finally it introduces absurd beauty in different periods in Chinese literature and points out that the uniqueness of absurd beauty created by Wang Xiaobo, Mo Yan, Can Xue, Liu Zhenyun and Yuhua. That is to say, they have obvious consciousness, and exceed all other writers as for the quantity and quality of works about absurd beauty.The first part includes chapter 1 to chapter 3. It divides the absurd beauty created by Wang Xiaobo, Mo Yan, Can Xue, Liu Zhenyun and Yuhua, etc. into color grotesque, language grotesque, image grotesque, and logic grotesque. Through this classification, it makes an analysis and summary of the wide use of deformation, reversal, expansion, deformity and disorder, etc. in their works.The first chapter focuses on color grotesque---------a colorful weird world. In this electronical image age, writers pursue perfect vision of pictures more consciously. They tend to apply the motive and writing technique to the transition and time gap from thinking in words to thinking by imagination, thus create absurd color profoundly and shock the readers. This chapter divides the ways of creating absurd beauty by the five authors into three types. The first type is using color to refer to people or things. The second is using color to intensify the horror of the situation, which makes a contrast and conflict with the beauty in readers’daily life. The third is using the sharp contrast between colors to create grotesque. This sharp contrast includes gradual change and sudden change. The former one is to make readers appreciate the grotesque brought by difference between colors in a parallel description. The latter is to make the object represented by colors change suddenly through the tension of language, thus bring readers shocking aesthetic experience.The second chapter focuses on the language grotesque. Language, as a tool of expression, has five major aesthetic psychology functions, namely, naming, stating, simulating reality, expressing feeling, and understanding the world. Literature is also an aesthetic activity. So the writers’process of writing in language is also a process to achieve the aesthetic state of balance, harmony and symmetry betwwen the outer and inner. This chapter mainly concludes three ways of creating absurdity through language. One is to create absurdity through the extremeness and abnormality of statement. Another is to produce absurdity through striking description of ugliness and grotesqueness. The third is to change the aesthetes’ psychological and emotional status.The third chapter focuses on image grotesque and logic grotesque-------the grotesque deformation. The images in the text are instinct with writers’feelings and symbols. In the works by Wang Xiaobo, Mo Yan, Can Xue, Liu Zhenyun and Yuhua, they have revealed ugliness and ridiculousness through a seris of abnormal images thus create absurd images. If it is a pursuit of beauty for the writers to create absurdity through images, then in the process of practicing beauty, they also express the pursuit of reason through illogical performance. There are two ways for the writers to create absurd images and absurd logic. One is to materialize human beings by exaggeration and deformation. The other is to create absurdity through abnormal logic. They create absurd logic in two situations. One is the reversal of people and events in time and space; the other is abnormality in the formation of human’s body.The second part includes chapter 4 and chapter 5. This part explores the source of absurd beauty in the works by Wang Xiaobo, Mo Yan, Can Xue, Liu Zhenyun and Yuhua, and judges the value of the absurd beauty.Chapter 4 focuses on the source of grotesque and its Chinese characteristics. By interpreting the general law and process of beauty creation, we can identify two sources of beauty, namely, the existence of the objective reality and the aesthetical consciousness and skills of human beings that create beauty. Only when both are driven by people’s strong sense of creation and certain writing techniques are used, can the objective beauty be brought out and the creation of beauty be achieved. Absurd beauty, as a basic form of esthetics, is no exception. The source of absurd beauty can also be divided into two types. The first type is the absurdity in reality, which is shown through the writers’cognition and experience towards the objective world. The second type is the theoretical consciousness and skills of writers who create absurd beauty. This is mainly embodied in the cultivation of ideology of literature and art towards writers’sense of absurdity. Literature reflects the real life which mainly comes from the writers’cognition and experience towards their own lives. The absurdity that writers extract from real life mainly comes from the particular historical period--------"cultural revolution" when human nature is confined and persecuted. The spread and acceptance of western modernism and postmodernism (theory and works) has greatly influenced Chinese writers’artistic thought and skills. The most important manifestation is the development of "human literature", especially the attempt of absurd writing with the theme of outstanding life noumenon consciousness by writers represented by Wang Xiaobo. For Wang Xiaobo, Mo Yan, Can Xue, Liu Zhenyun and Yuhua, who have created Chinese absurd literature, the influence affects their creation in two ways. The first is that the western modernist literary theory and works have influenced the value orientation of their writing, and then affected the selection of theme in the process of aesthetic creation. The other is that the western modernist literary theory and works have greatly broadened their horizon, affected their creation principle and influenced their writing methods further.Chapter 5 is to ponder over the value of grotesque writing. The absurd writing by Wang Xiaobo and other writers is a kind of literary creation as well as aesthetic practice. Their writing is of great value. From the perspective of aesthetic creation principle, absurd writing expresses resistance against ugliness and pursuit of beauty. From the perspective of aesthetic reception value, it brings aesthetes pleasant feelings. And as far as literary value is concerned, their writing is a brilliant flower in Chinese contemporary literature and is of unique literature value. The first value is the pursuit of beauty. The ultimate aim of any form of aesthetic practice is to pursue beauty, and absurdity, as a basic aesthetics coexisting with grace, loftiness, ridiculousness, and tragedy, is no exception. The creation principle of pursuing beauty through absurdity is realized in a logical order, that is, the cognition of ugliness----the resistance of ridiculousness against ugliness-the pursuit of beauty. The second value of absurd writing is to delight. To a certain extent, artistic absurdity can bring people spiritual freedom. It can make people step into a new aesthetic space, get peace in mind, eliminate mental distress, and restore spiritual balance, thus ensure people’s health development. The third value of absurd writing lies in its unique literature value. The absurd writing by Wang Xiaobo and others reveals the consciousness of absurd sense. Their works first combines the theory on absurdity and creation in Chinese contemporary literature, which makes their writing of unique value. Their exploration of absurd writing not only provides other writers with distinct writing skills, but also inspires subsequent writers’way of thinking in aesthetic creation. Moreover, their writing provides a radically different text for Chinese literary critics and a brand-new research perspective for literary criticism, which is of great value to the theoretical development of Chinese literary criticism and the construction of sinicized and national system of the modernist literature theory.