A Study On The History Portrayal In Jiandao Migrationnovels

As a migrational ethnic group, the Koreans’ migration process was featured by scattering and dispersions. The migration of the Korean people from the Kor ean peninsula to the Chinese territory was conducted mainly via Jiandao, which involved the largest number of people and lasted the longest period. It is close ly relevant with the modern history of the Korean peninsula, China and Japan. The modern history of the Korean peninsula and Chinese Korean people is far from complete if the Jiandao migration part is missing from it; therefore, Chine se Korean literature and the overseas Korean language and cultural fields have l ong began producing folk literature themed by migration history. The author hol ds that a deeper probe into the Daojian migration literature not only helps to b etter understand modern Korean literature, but also weighs much in studying the property of Korean literature. The topic is of both academic significance and p ractical value.In recent years, the studies on Jiandao migration novels mainly focus on co nflicts, characters and their positions in literature history. However, the perspecti ves, such as the relations between migration novels and historical facts, the for ms and origins of migration novels in the process of reportraying the history, ar e still vacant. In light of this, the dissertation selects three representative novels including North Jiandao written by South Korean writer An Sugil, The Hard Times written by Chinese Korean writer Li Gensheng and The Tearing Douman River written by Cui Hongri as research objectives. This paper is based on the fruits of the study of the present researchers. The writer gives an analysis of t he art of the above three migration novels about how they retold the migration history through the adoption of the methods of comparative literature, new hist orical criticism and literature interpretation as well.The dissertation mainly consists of five parts:The first part is Introduction. The dissertation firstly summarizes the concept of Jiandao migration novels and the importance of the related novels, and also illustrates the intertextuality between the theme novels and migration history; th en concludes and investigates the present research fruits on the Jiandao migratio n novels, and figures out the existing problems and shortcomings; thus introduc es the dissertation’s research objective and methods involved.The second part narrates the historical migration site of Koreans, namely th e North Jiandao, including the history traces of Jiandao and how it became the habitation of Koreans; then this part examines the reasons and main body of migration, and also the conflicts among the migrants; finally this part analyzes t he relations between Jiandao migration history and its themed novels. The narra tion in this part is also the formation premise of Jiandao migration novels.The third part compares the three writers’ culture identity, history outlook a nd political cultural environment. Based on the comparison of these factors, the paper analyzes the subjective reasons why they had different interpretations and reproductions of the same subject matter.The fourth part probes deeply into An Sugil’s North Jiandao, Li Gensheng’ s The Hard Times and Cui Hongri’s The Tearing Douman River, trying to figur e out how they reportray the Jiandao migration history from the literary perspec tive. Because the differences in the political cultural environment, writer’s menta lity, ideology, grasp level of the historical information and the artistic expression ability as well, they produced varied works. They make different choice when they consider the historical events and figures. They create different conflicts an d themes. So in these three novels the relation between the works and the reali ty of the history are endowed different models. An Sugil himself had the first hand migration experience. Through the fate of the Li’s three generations in the tempest sovereignty restoration nationalism movements which took Jiandao as t he base, the book lofted the theme of the unbending national spirit confronting the Japanese colonial invaders; Li Gensheng’s book was about fighting against n ature by the people community and the process of the migrants becoming a me mber of the Chinese nationality; Cui Hongri was a writer in the nameless age, i.e. the age of coexistence of multiple values. He took a foothold at humanism history outlook. Instead of depicting the history of nation and country, he focus ed on the life of the people, creating the style of popularity and secularity.The fifth part is Conclusion. This part firstly concludes the problems and li mitations of three novels in reportraying the history. They are all inclined to pe rsonalize and romanticize history and are not ensured to keep the original histor y facts because the books are subjected to the writers’s political and cultural en vironment, writer’s awareness, purpose awareness, etc. The writer of this paper holds the opinion that the insufficient research on the information in the fields of folklore history, culture history, economy history during the production of the books is also a reason of this phenomenon. The lack of the full knowledge ab out the Jiandao history, the background and foundation of the stories, in particul ar led to the profuse of imagination and lost the authenticity of history. The wr iter of this paper concludes that those works which really reflect the complexity of history conflicts, mingle the historical events and people of different politica 1 nature, authentically reproduce the history are yet to be created. Based on the se opinion, we can safely say that the present Jiandao migration novel, such as North Jiandao, The Hard Times and The Tearing Douman River have not met the request of realism.