Openness And Concealment:Study On The Novels About "Cultural Revolution" Since The1990s

"Cultural Revolution" was a contemporary Chinese historical event which was truly complicated in its process and has been enormously influential. It is always an important motif for the contemporary Chinese literary creation. Following Scar Literature and Reflection Literature in the beginning of the New Period, literary writings about "Cultural Revolution" have revived with vengeance since the1990s. Those writings constitute a new literary phenomenon, involving a great number of writers and literary works, demonstrating a large variety of perspectives and styles-as well as rich implications. This dissertation aims to discuss the fiction about "Cultural Revolution" since the1990s, to make an overall survey of the literary creation about it, to explore the continuities and changes between these novels and their precedents with the same theme, to analyze social situation, cultural mechanism, literary ideas and other factors that caused these changes, to summarize the achievements and limits of fiction about "Cultural Revolution", and also to reveal the depth and limitation of novelists when they reflected in their novels on "Cultural Revolution".This dissertation is made up of three parts:Introduction, the main body and Conclusion. The main body is divided into four chapters.In the part of Introduction, it first sorts out the historical process of the production of fiction about "Cultural Revolution" in the context of the New Period Literature, and based on this, it proceeds to explain the significance of the subject matter, to review the related scholarship, and to propose the main thesis statement, overall structure, and research approach.Chapter One, which intends to approach the subject from the external situation, deals with the context of the fiction about "Cultural Revolution" since1990s, and emphasizes the fundamental significance of "ear of talking narrative" and "authors as the subject of creation". For the present author, the historical period of "since1990s" is a period with both openness and complexity. It started with the dramatic changes brought forth by the political unrest of the1989and also the great changes in the social and economic policies in the1990s, and extended well into the21st century. Impacted by these changes in society, culture and value, this period was a truly important historical landmark, characterized by market economy, cultural pluralism and social openness. The novelists who wrote about "Cultural Revolution" since1990s can be categorized into four different groups:Returnees, Zhiqings, Post-Cultural Revolution Generation and the New Immigrants. These four groups of writers are distinct from each other in terms of their age gap, experience, background and ideology, and therefore differ greatly in their interpretation and expression of "Cultural Revolution" as well as in their narrative perspectives and material contents.Chapter Two makes an analysis of the characters in the fictions about "Cultural Revolution" since the1990s and addresses the question of "whose Cultural Revolution". The characters are grouped into four types of figures:the disenchanted cultural heroes, the split Zhiqing Generation, the appearance of the silent majority, and the looming of the historically marginalized. They form into a character genealogy made up by Leftist intellectuals, Red Guards-Zhiqing, lower class people and teenagers. The novels about "Cultural Revolution" since the1990s no longer portrayed innocent victims which were the conventional and stereotyped characters in Scar Literature and Reflection Literature. Instead, these novels adopted multiple perspectives of self-reflective witnesses and reflective "others", and provided a richer and more realistic picture of the participants, witnesses, and marginalized people, making a vivid and mixed display of the profundity of history.Chapter Three intends to solve the question of "What kind of’Cultural Revolution’". From the three aspects of "Mundane life in’Cultural Revolution’","individualized spiritual history of’Cultural Revolution’" and "popularized story of ’Cultural Revolution’", this chapter examines the new shift of the novels about "Cultural Revolution" since the1990s in term of the narrative materials. Instead of regarding "Cultural Revolution" as a cruel political struggle or a disastrous social like Scar Literature and Reflection Literature, those novelists focused on some other aspects of the history of "Cultural Revolution" like everyday life, human soul and spirit, or the narrative itself, and revealed a panoramic picture. The novelists pushed the ordinary life concern as food and sex into the foreground of narration, and narrated the everyday life which was intertwined with political ideology but nudged beside by the violent revolution. The everyday life details were proficiently provided to show an undercurrent which kept a distance from or fought against the mainstream politics. Meanwhile, novelists also probed into the human mind and their spiritual world under the impact of "Cultural Revolution", exposing the mystery of individual souls and human psychology deformed by the cruel and absurd political movement. With the opening-up policies and the development of market economy, there emerged an ever increasing tendency of commercialization and popularization of literature. Some novels about "Cultural Revolution" began to combine elements of sexual love, violence and nostalgia with their serious intellectual concern, or write about "Cultural Revolution" in the fashion of political scandal exposition or popular fiction.Chapter Four discusses the narrative techniques of the novels about "Cultural Revolution" since the1990s in terms of its choice of perspectives, time and space, and rhetoric style. Those novels made an outbreak from the dominant realistic style and experimented with different choice of perspectives, framework of time and space, structural arrangement and language style. As a meaningful form, the literary text concerns not only the personal taste or ideas of the novelists, but also the overall social and cultural circumstances. An individualized and limited perspective presented "Cultural Revolution" to be a life event and a spiritual event that related to the individual themselves, and showed a personal imagination and deconstructive understanding of the "Cultural Revolution" in the form of autobiographic narration. While the perspectives from both insiders and outsiders gave a polyphonic narrative of the history of "Cultural Revolution", the unusual perspectives from children, animals or fools presented a special examination of the history of "Cultural Revolution" and gave the story an extraordinary touch. A half-enclosed space echoed a social space in "Cultural Revolution" that was both dyed by the grand political narrative but also maintained its true color of folk ethics. The combination of a detailed timeline and an open narrative time prevented the literary "Cultural Revolution" from becoming flat and uniform. In contrast to the tragic and bitter tone of Scar Literature and Reflection Literature, the fiction about "cultural Revolution" since the1990s was aesthetically featured with the "post-tragic" style, which included a warm poetic touch, rich symbolic meanings, and grotesque or carnival techniques.In the part of Conclusion, this dissertation believes that the literary creation of novels about "Cultural Revolution" since the1990s is both open and concealed within the open and pluralistic social context of the1990s. It is open because when compared to Scar Literature and Reflection Literature, these novels approached the narrative of "Cultural Revolution" from an individualized perspective, about the everyday life, with elements of jesting and destruction, and therefore opened up a broader narrative space in creating a panorama of "Cultural Revolution". On the other hand, such openness also implies a new way of concealment, because it was limited to individual and folk narration and acquired some characteristics of popular culture due to the impact of pop culture and consumerist culture. In brief, whether the literary creation of novels about "Cultural Revolution" or the research on the history of "Cultural Revolution", both are unfinished and still on the way.