A Critical Study Of The Root Literature

“The root literature”, as a new literary genre, has becoming a main current inliterature since the beginning of the new century, and records the psychological tracesof lower classes in the more than a decade. For a big developing country with a totalof about100million people who live under the poverty line, the historicalsignificance of “the root literature” is particularly important. However, a series ofproblems have risen not only in the quality of “the root literature”, but also in theresearch situation and the level of theoretical construction.This dissertation does no longer dwell on the following seemingly fundamentalissues: validity of the term “under-stratum”, the reasonability of the defining “the rootliterature”, the possibility of voicing from the heart of “under-stratum”, the rationalityof elite class’s speaking for the under-stratum. Instead, the dissertation inclines toregard “under-stratum” and “the root literature” as the temporary concepts, and enterinto the literary scene with the two concepts, and eventually make efforts forenhancing the theoretical prosperity of the literary creation and improving the level ofthe works.Introduction is a review part, in which the study course of “the root literature” isreviewed firstly, and then the six theoretical propositions in the present study aresummarized. These propositions include: the emphasis on the humanistic spirit andthe responsibility or mission of intellectuals, the theory of consumerism culture,aesthetics, the thought of binary oppositions, the political ideology, the left-wingliterary tradition. And next the dissertation summarizes research problems in studying“the root literature”. The first is the obscure boundary of “the root literature”, whichleads to the difficulty in studying and criticizing “the root literature”; the second oneis the problem of sample selection. The sample selection of “the root literature”mainly focuses on the more famous literary journals, which may result in thelimitations of the study. The third is the haunting of inertia thinking. And it alwayssimply classifies the complex contradictions in “the root literature” into the binaryoppositions between town and country. Fourth, there are rarely the innovativeperspectives. Many researchers interpret the same or similar issues by different works,which has become a recurring illness difficult to cure. Fifth, the interpretationoverweighs the creation. The phenomenon of over-interpretation is easily overlookedin the study of “the root literature”. And then the three issues in the further researchare intensively shown: the methods of expressing the survival of “under-stratum”, theevaluation of text value, and the studying of the readers of “the root literature”. Finally, an overview of the content, the thinking way and research methods is statedbriefly.Chapter one is the criticism about the authors. This paper argues that the eliteclass, due to the superiority of the creation and publishing, is still the main body ofcreating “the root literature”. The first two sections mainly analyze and discuss aboutthe problems of both elite writing and grassroots writing. There are five aspects in thedeficiency of elite writing: the lack of innovation, the repeated theme, the missing ofromanticism and superficiality of investigating humanity, the natural range betweenthe writer and under-stratum, and the spiritual dilemma of the rural writers. The worksof grassroots classes, due to their own life experience and the lower level of education,incline to describe the phenomena too much, lacks extremely fictionality. In addition,grassroots have to make a living all day, which lead to the relatively narrow domainand the blindly complaint. Therefore, the necessary environment for the grassrootswriters is poorer because of the lack of the financial and human resources support.Chapter two is the criticism about the world. The disputes about the concepts ofreality and real still exist nowadays, but there is a consensus that are acceptedcommonly—that is reasonability. If this standard is not met, either in the name of thenew guise of artistic creation or arbitrarily being far-fetched in “the root literature”,which is clearly contrary to the original intention of the writers of “the root literature”.The chapter combines the details in Chen Yingsong’s Taiping Dog and Hu Xuewen’sHanging Homicide Case, and proposes three problems of writing the realistic lifeabout the under-stratum in “the root literature”: the severe isolation between the livingenvironment of the characters and the reality, the "distortion" of the plot, empty-shellcharacters.Chapter three is the criticism about the readers. In the studying of this chapter,the author visited the two counties, four towns, more than twenty villages, practicallysurveys the needs of the rural readers for the “the root literature”. The results of thesurvey show the complete separation of the lower class people from “the rootliterature”. The dissertation firstly analyzes the reasons from the writers from threeaspects, the elite artistic pursuit, the reasonability of market positioning, and theimpact of omnimedia on “the root literature”. Then from the readers perspective, thedissertation proposes the two reasons leading to the isolation between “the rootliterature” and the lower class readers: one is the variety of readers’ entertaining formsreduces objectively the possibility of consuming “the root literature”, the other is thatliterary reading is a luxury for the lower class people in terms of their less financial income and lower cultural level.Chapter four is the criticism about the works. In section one, the dissertationmainly centers on “what to write” and “how to write” to explore the relationshipbetween “the root literature” and “the pure literature”. This paper argues that the twoare not mutually exclusive. The traditional binary thinking needs to be broken, and thelink between them should be explored. In section two, the people’s character isintroduced into the study of “the root literature”. This paper argues that theconsciousness of “Other” and Self-identity tends to be extremely powerful, whichcovers the specific emotions in the text, and leads to “the root literature” with theobvious people’s character are in small quantities. In section three, the dissertationrefutes the idea that the popular root culture is the recovery of the left-wing literature.According to the views of New Left History,“the root culture”, due to its inherentcharacteristics of “non-revolutionary” and its flattering to the ruling class, has thegreat difference from the left-wing literature. It is the reflecting the difficult realisticlife that can not prove the inheritance relations of them. In section four, it isimpossible to avoid the realism to discuss the rise, development, and the sources of“the root culture”.Chapter five the dissertation expounds the ideal construction of “the root culture”from five aspects: reality of the emotion, unconventionality of the perspective,intervention of the rational criticism spirit, foster of a sense of distance, the spirit oftragedy aesthetics.