On Liu Zhenyun’s Novel

Generally speaking, Liu Zhenyun has been widely known as an author since his debut novel Tapu in1987. After the publication of a series of the so-called "neo-realist novels," Liu began to gamer a rising tide of literary criticism."Neo-realism" is meaningful for the reason that no one has never written like this before in the perspective of traditional realism."Neo-realism" wakes up from the dream, and gives the reader a new perspective to observe life. Up to now, the recent researches on Liu Zhenyun started from this point. But the so-called "neo-realism" is neither his key point nor his starting point. Liu’s writing began with the publication of One Night in Melonfield in1979. Before his success in his mature works like Tapu and New recruits, Liu has had a long practicing period. Even though his writing in this period is relatively immature, we can still clearly know his way of looking at the world. And if we view imitation stage of Liu Zhenyun’s writing and later writing as a whole, We can also know the difference from the writers who pay much attention to customs, landscapes, regions, and times, and from those social critical writers as well. Liu Zhenyun is a writer with thought, and tries to grasp the authenticity behind world, life and times. The development of his writing reflects the process of his thinking from superficial to profound, from outside to inside, from phenomenon to essential. During this process, Liu has developed his own systematic cognition towards his time and individual existence dilemma. He does not try to ascribe the process of tradition and modem to a nihilistic situation, he tries to find a way of going beyond the dilemma. Though this kind of beyond is not perfect, it is thought-provoking for the individual in trouble. Besides, Liu Zhenyun’s writing style on insistent exploration of thought and his accomplishment are peculiar in contemporary literary arena in China.This dissertation attempts to comb the process of Liu Zhenyun’s writing, grasp the development of the formation of his thought, delineate the system of his thought, and locate his value and significance in the history of contemporary literature.Part one:Chapter One is a carding of Liu’s writing process up to2012. It includes three phases:the first phase is mimesis from1979to1987. In this process, he was still in the shadow of tradition, and tried to grasp the world but incapable of doing so. His narrative techniques deliberately constructed complicated plot and image, but it was naive and artificial on the whole. The second phase began with1987to2002. Liu Zhenyun started to shake off the conventions and traditions, and to articulate his own thinking of his time and world, and think the essence of the individual under his times. Thus, power, ethics, history, homeland, religion and existence became his foci. Basing on the narrative technique in the first phase, Liu adopted plenty of formal experiments in language carnival, narrative structure and style. His writing aroused attentions and arguments as well. In the third phase is from2003up to now. At this moment, he has arrived the dilemma of existence of being. He thinks that his ideas have already arrived the authenticity of human nature. After his narrative experiments in the third phases, he came back to a simpler narrative method. Meanwhile, his successful experiments in the second phase were kept in this phase. The arrangement of his narrative structure always highlights the meaning of his form. Part Two:Chapter One dwells on the writing of power on Liu Zhenyun’s work and the reason why people pursue power, the process of the working of power, the influence that power exerts on human being. Power becomes the method for the self-formation of the individual. This recognition itself is formed in the shadow of power, and it enhances the power instead. Human nature is alienated under the cover of power, and loses his wholeness. Thus, this attempt of self-affirmation through power is doomed to failure. Chapter Two analyzes the ethic aspects in Liu’s work, which includes several types of ethics and elaborates the dilemma and tenderness of ethics. Liu points out that ethics comes from the human nature and has its tender side, but it has been reconstructed by power during the development of society and become an accomplice to the power. The alienation of the individual is completed in the conspiracy of power and ethics. Chapter Three elaborates on the efforts of Liu Zhenyun’s writing on "new history," which includes several dimensions of history:repetition, contingency, truth and presentation. The whole process of alienation of human being by power and ethics is completed in the dimension of time so that the history we read is a covered history. This chapter also discusses Liu’s efforts of deconstruct the traditional historic view by using the methods of parody, kirsch, play. Chapter Four is about homeland. It expands on the concepts of homeland and nostalgia. From the following four parts: time or space, thing or man, imagination or truth and homeland or individual, it discusses the homeland as a spiritual space for the nostalgic individual, in which all the power threatening and tenderness are included and the alienation of the individual is completed. The homeland complex is merely a reflection of the discomfort contemporary, an effort to find comfort in an imaginary past. Chapter Five, the essential part of this dissertation, discusses that through his thinking on human nature, Liu Zhenyun assumes that he has found a way to the world. This part discusses several kinds of human nature:cowardness, forgetfulness, bully, getting use to the present, group psychology and desiring for equality and etc. The nature of human nature is that it has its ugly part and its gentle part as well. This leads to the dilemma of the individual, but it is the human nature the individual in trouble has to face. Chapter Six analyzes the influence of religion and Liu Zhenyun’s view on religion. After Liu’s thinking on China and Western religion, he thinks that there is no religion in the Western sense in China. In China, the real force that harmonizes the social relations in China is not religion but Confucian ethics. The religions in China, such as Buddhism from India or local Taoism, all struggle to survive in the shadow of ethics, and provide people a way to go beyond survive. But in modern times, the effects of religion has been completed dissolved with the development of industry and technology, and the collapse of traditional ethics. Modern people fall into a state of loneness and anxiety. Chapter Seven is on Liu Zhenyun’s recent works One Sentence Worth Thousands and I’m Not Pan Jinlian. He entered into a thinking on existence, and attempts to explore a way to go beyond the predicament through facing up to it and follow the desire of the human nature.Conclusion generalizes the main points in the preceding chapters, and terms this process as "on the road to the authenticity of human nature." It discusses his creative attitude on realism and his effort of reconstruct a new ethical status by discarding traditional power, ethics, history and homeland. It also points out several problems in Liu Zhenyun’s writing, and tries to make neutral evaluation towards his writing accomplishment and characteristics by comparion.