On The Ethical Writing Of Western Local Novels Since The 1990s

Since the 1990s, there have emerged a large number of young and middle-aged writers that occupied in local novels creations in Western China, they have deep thinking about the living conditions of local peasants and western culture, and they have accomplished profound literary achievement. In a certain sense, western local novels have become an essential component of contemporary literature. The literary creation of western writers is closely related to the unique western local culture and folklore tradition, the integration of natural landscape, the multiple psychological traits of ethnic culture, and the relying on strong religious background enable them to demonstrate distinctive literary forms which are different from the eastern writers. Although the study of local novels has become a hotspot of academical controversy and discussion, the study of western local novels hasn’t developed the systematic overall research, especially the form and variation of the development of western local novels, and some western local novel writers have been overlooked and marginalized for a long time, therefore it’s necessary to conduct a further study to this topic.Since the 1990s, the ethical writings of western local novels have concentrated mainly on three aspects:family ethics, love ethics and ethics of justice. The family ethics writing includes father-son relationship, couple relationship, relationship between brothers and sisters and neighborly relations etc., and it presents the complex changes of human relations from traditional to modern ones during the period of social economic transformation. The western local novel writers based on the development of rural society and the change of living conditions of local farmers, in the strong contrast between tradition and modern, ideal and reality, urban and rural, they promote the positive factors of modern rural social ethics, present the new look of family relationships and the natural kind folk customs of the western rural areas. Meanwhile, they disclose some negative phenomenons and criticize the lag performance of traditional consanguinity ethics, the deep-rooted bad habits of rural clan ethics, and the modern young generation’s acute behaviors of subverting traditional pecking order. The western writers expressed their yearning for modern ethics, but they still keep looking back for traditional virtues. By writing the complex connotation of the characters’behaviors and their emotional attitudes, these writers showed the alienation of modern society, which is caused by factors such as survival predicament, economic interests etc. Western writers are deeply concerned with the current situations of rural societies and full of enlightenment conscious and humanitarian care.The western writers write respectively from the relation between desire and ethics, survival and love, promiscuity and incest, the ideal and reality of love etc, to reveal the change of modern peasants’choice of love and types of love, which has shifted from conservative depressive to open pluralism. In the rural societies, in their pursuit of love, people face with the dilemma of the conflicts between traditional ethics and the modern ethical conceptions:one way is to depress desires in order to preserve ethics, another is to violate ethics and pursuit love. As to the ethic problem of life and love, modern peasants have become more independent, but sometimes this tendency inevitably produces tragedy of sacrificing life for real love. Currently the peasants face with the moral dilemma between keep surviving and violate ethics, especially the disadvantaged groups represented by the rural women, who self-consciously walk into moral alienation in order to keep surviving. The writers write about misplacement phenomenon of pursuing love——promiscuity and incest, the ignorance of promiscuous sexual behavior sand the degradation of incest acts make them process deep analysis of humanity tragedy and human destiny. There will be inevitable punishment for these wrongdoings, therefore the writers call on people to obey the moral civilization principles of incest taboo. In the modern ethics perspective, the writers presents two different views of love-choosing:the aesthetic and moral harmony of ideal love; the utility and materialization of realistic love. In the excessive pursuit of efficiency and interest, people’s criterion of accessing the value of love and the way of choosing love have presented a tendency of utilitarian. Therefore, how to balance the external material factors and the inner moral spirit has become the moral dilemma which modern society has to deal with.The writings of ethics of justice in the western rural novels manifest as ethical issues such as people’s justice, nature justice and the survival of people and their alienation. Western peasants’conceptions of justice present different changes, traditional farmers pay more attention to Chinese Confucian thoughts of "value justice above material gains", while influenced by conceptions of modern civilization, instead of being constrained to traditional justice actions, modern farmers seek for modern ethical consciousness such as democratic equality, justice and equality in the spiritual levels. The western writers especially write about this kind of moral paradox:people who stick to principles of justice ends up being condemned and assaulted. As to the problem of officials’justice and utility, western writers use three images of different kinds of village officials to present different moral systems:honest and upright officials represent the justice under state ideology; mediocre officials who abuse of power for personal gain and damage the interest of farmers, rendering as moral disorder influenced by utilitarian factors; village officials that be approved by the public while violate administrative rules, this implies the conflict between officialdom system and self moral choice. The western writers focus on natural justice, more is due to the influence of Western ecological literature and the inheritance of local ecological ethics. By writing about different characters who protect environment and who destroy it, the writers convey the spirit of justice of awing nature and respecting lives, and advocate the ecological concept of people and nature coexisting in harmony. As to modern people’s survival aesthetic forms and the alienation phenomenon, western writers treat the former with praising and affirmative attitude, while treat the latter with questioning and criticizing ethical stance.Western writers’ethical writing stances are deeply connected with their living environment and national believes. Their ethical writing stances roughly appears as the following forms:the first is ethical writings with adherence to suffering feelings. Gui Zi adopts civilian position to write about ordinary people’s "misery in the sunshine", and dares to look at the dark side of society and the lowliness of human nature; Feng Jiqi writes about the sufferings of farmers being suppressed by abuse of power, using the desire of power to show the complex of rural humanity. Luo Weizhang adopts underlying ethical position to write about the double morbidity misery faced by modern peasants in the progress of the urbanization process, neither going to town nor returning to village can they avoid material poverty and spiritual desolation. Both Ran Zhengwan and Wang Hua sticks to the stance of rural left-behind person and marginalized person, they write about the miserable condition of industrialization in the rural area causes farmers lose rural homeland. Both of them are full of strong moral responsibility consciousness. The second is ethical writings with rural romantic feelings. Due to the similarity of living environment in western regions, Xue Mo, Guo Xuebo, Mo Yue, Guo Wenbin use their own literary viewpoints to support the romantic tone of the ethical writings in western local novels. Xue Mo, Guo Xuebo, Mo Yue are full of admiration of love to their own homeland:the desert, the gobi and the liangtan, they integrate the unique natural aesthetic of western region, religious affection and national feelings in their novels, and express their own literary view and regional ethical character. Guo Wenbin turns his writing stance from focusing on the rural reality to folk traditional culture, looks for the warmth and poetic of rural areas, and construct a special kind of poetic rural ethics. The third is ethical writings with the attitude of peasant gratitude. Shi Shuqing and Ma Jinlian of the Xi Haigu writers group have deep emotional attachment to their rural homeland, they self-consciously conduct vernacular narrative with gratitude ethical attitudes. Liao Yirong and Li Jinxiang holds fast to write for the underlying farmers. All these writers blend their own national belief into their novel writings, filled with noble feelings of religious ethics and strong sense of national pride. In the last part, Jia Pingwa sticks to civilian positions in his novel writing in the past few years, reviews and criticizes the rural areas under the influence of modern civilization with his elite awareness as an intellectual. He changes his attitude with modern ethics from expectation to criticize, and his expression of his own ethical is ambiguous because of his ethical confusion. In general, the ethical writings of western local writers are realistic, and the writers’social responsibility is quite clear. They see acutely through the social realistic problems, profoundly reveal the seriousness of ethical problems, and lead the public to pay attention to the ethical problems in modern rural areas.The artistic expression of ethical writing in western local novels self-consciously draw close to the mainstream literature and keeps its intrinsic regional literary style. Firstly, in writing techniques manifest as multiple artistic reference with priority to realism. Most western local writers stick to pure realistic style in their writings, and their works are full of strong feelings of social realistic, the spirit of realistic criticism and realistic approach mainly with time narrative. Among of which, some writers (such as Hong Ke, Dong Xi, Gui Zi) are deeply influenced by Chinese vanguard novels, they vigorously learn and imitate western modern art techniques, use the narrative skills of "meta-fiction" to digest the writings of traditional novels, and they are keen on vanguard narrative skills such as time leap and duplicate narration. Jia Pingwa and Feng Jiqi borrow modern techniques on the basis of retaining realism, blend these two kinds of forms together and constitute their own writing style. Because of their ethnic and religious background, minority writers such as A Lai, Guo Xuebo and Shi Shuqing integrate their own national religious rituals, myths and legends into their local novels, whereby constitute the magical and surreal colors of their textual narrative. Secondly, in stylistic features, the western writers blend artistic conceptions, images and emotion expressions of poetry art into the creation of their local novels, whereby forms of the poetic artistic conception and situation aesthetic of their novels. The narrative themes of western local novels are daily trivial matters and with autobiographical colors, their language expression is delicate and sentimental, their length is relatively short and present a prosaic stylistic feature. Thirdly, some western writers integrate folk customs, folk songs and dialect into their novel writings, which enriches folk cultural aesthetic characteristics of their local novels, also enables them to better interpret the connotation of western regional ethical writing.On research methods, comprehensive application of literary aesthetic criticism, and related theories of ethical studies, sociological research etc. On the basis of collection and sorting the main western literary journals, this thesis tries to discover and excavate the original materials related to the ethical writings of western local novels, focuses on the novel creation of western young and middle-aged writers, pay attention to the details of their writings, and try to get their insight, combined with ethical interpretation. To grasp this topic as a whole, put the understanding of individual writers and their writings in the historical background of western social reform and the whole picture of western local novels’ development, illustrate the multiple connotation and development tendency in the ethical writings of western local novels since the 1900s.In a certain sense, selecting ethical perspective to study the creation of western local novels extends the moral enlightenment consciousness and the social reality value of literature. To a certain extent, literature indirectly reflects the social reality, and the study of the ethical writings in the western local novels is helpful for us to grasp the current status of the development in rural ethics. The creation of western local novels has been increasingly prosperous, and it has become an essential literary form in the development of contemporary local novels. This thesis expands the research scope of former studies, which was limited to the literary creation in the Northwest of China, to integrate the literary creation of the local writers in the Southwest of China in the study, and conduct overall research of local novel writings in all 12 provinces in the western of China. By using the ethical perspective as the entry point, combined with other factors such as the background of social transformation, regional cultures and ethical customs, this thesis try to investigate and discover the scope of ethical writings in the western local novels has extend from human relations to all things of nature, the writers’ attitude has shifted from criticize traditional ethics to question modern ethics, and their ethical evaluation standard has been inclined to be more diverse and open.