The Scientism Of Prusek’s Research On Modern Chinese Literature

Jaroslav Prusek (1906-1980), a famous Czech sinologist, one of the founders of Prague Sinology School. He translated the works of Lu Xun and published them in Prague in1930s. Prusek’s study of modern Chinese literature started early and had far-reaching influence. Prusek was a Marxist and his historical determinism profoundly influenced his study of modern Chinese literature. He emphasized the close association of literature and society and looked for the source of Chinese literary modernity within the Chinese community. He linked the Chinese literary modernity with political and economic conditions of Chinese feudal society. Prusek was also a structuralist. He had carefully studied the theories of Russian formalism and Prague structuralism. Under the guidance of these theories, he studied and discussed the language, style, narrative strategies, type conversion and other aspects of modern Chinese literature in detail. Prusek’s understanding of the relationship between literature and society was deeply impacted by Marxism and Structuralism, which share a similar understanding about objective truth and universal law. These determine that Prusek’s study of modern Chinese literature has distinctive scientific spirit. Although Prusek was a Marxist, he was not a vulgar Marxism. He also got a unique research perspective from the theoretical background of structuralism. His scientific perspective research, which distinguishes with the native study of modern Chinese literature, is worth new understanding and interpretation.The scientism of Prusek’s study of modern Chinese literature is mainly in the scientific research concept and methods. This thesis includes an introduction and four chapters.The Introduction summarizes Prusek’s main basic views of purpose, attitudes and methods of his literary studies, as well as the scientism tendency in his research. Prusek holded that the purpose of literary studies should be discovering the objective truth, namely the general law of the development of literature. He thought we should strive to "overcome personal bias" in order to provide general readers scientific knowledge of literature which is unfamiliar to them. Prusek thought there were two basic methods of literary research:one is historical perspective, the other is system analysis. Historical perspective, including literary history perspective and social history perspective, means that we should always have a sense of history in the process of literary studies. Systems analysis emphasizes the relationships between things, rather than looking into the nature of a particular one.The first chapter discusses the Prusek’s scientific concepts on modern Chinese literature, including the concept of integrity, self-adjusting and conversion. From the Chinese literary integrity, Prusek demonstrated in detail that the occurrence of modern Chinese literature was the result of the evolution of the Chinese literary tradition, which can be divided into two levels:one is the lyric tradition of Chinese classical literature, the other is subjectivism and individualism spirit in fictions of Qing Dynasty. Thus, Prusek showed the development context of Chinese literary spiritual inherit. From the concept of self-adjusting in Chinese literature, Prusek believed that Chinese literature transformation from classical to modern was a long-term revolution. There must be a continuous series of changes caused by self-regulation, including changes in the ideological and cultural level, enhancing of the status of fiction, literary artistic innovation, etc. When self-adjusting reaches a certain level, it will change the dominant components of Chinese classical literary structure and the classic literature will be converted into the modern literature. Prusek also specifically discussed the transitional literary works produced during the process of transformation from Chinese classical literature to modern literature showing the conversion trajectory.The second chapter analyses the Prusek’s scientific research about the functions of modern Chinese literature. Prusek advocated realism and literature serving the people, and put emphasis on cognitive and social function of literature. But in his specific studying practice, literature was not seen as political mouthpiece or mechanical reflection of social life. In Prusek’s literary theory system,"reality" and "artistic expression of reality " are two distinct concepts. Additionally the achievement of literary cognitive function is associated with aesthetic functions. At the same time, he believed that literature was passing knowledge of the world to people through its own unique aesthetic features.The third chapter discusses the Prusek’s scientific study of modern Chinese literary types, including lyrical literature which is subjective and epic literature which is objective. Modern Chinese lyrical literature was affected mainly by European Romanticism and Chinese classical lyrical tradition, nevertheless the epic literature was influenced by Western literary in19th century and Chinese classical realism. Chinese Lyrical literature has realism features and epic literature has lyrical features. They are in a complicated binary juxtaposition. In Prusek’s discussion Lyric and epic features are not just literary types nor summaries of literary themes consistents with the specific type, but also arts of expression which are closely related to the summaries of themes. In short, lyrical literature needs the expression of reality to avoid empty of contents and the epic literature needs to enhance the aesthetic value with the help of lyrical contents. Prusek’s understanding of lyrical and epic literature of modern Chinese literature, which are the inherent power of occurrence and development of Modern Chinese Literature, greatly expanded the Western original concept of lyric and epic literature.The fourth chapter discusses Prusek’s scientific studies about the narrative of Modern Chinese Literature from the aspects of narrator, narrative perspective, plot structure, discourse of characters. Prusek’s narrative research of Modern Chinese Literature broke the closed structure of structuralism narratology. The purpose of his research was not giving a description of stable narrative structure in modern Chinese fictions, but studying the development of the modern Chinese fiction from the historical perspective. The study of narrative form showed the development path of the concept of Chinese literature from traditional to modern. Prusek’s research let the narrative study transform from a purely structuralism synchronic research into a historical research, concerning the influence of historical and cultural context on the development of the narrative structure. Prusek found Marxism and structuralism as support for his research on Chinese Modern Literature, His study associated the content research with the form research, demonstrating the purpose of communication between internal research and external research under the guidance of Marxism and Structuralism, reflecting the trend of fusion of Marxism and Structuralism aesthetics. Meanwhile, Prus’ek’s discovery of subjective and individualism in modern Chinese literature, discuss on the integration of lyricism and epic, emphasis on writers personalities accorded with the trend of fusion scientism and humanism to a certain extent. Prusek’s research on Modern Chinese Literature includes not only scientific analysis, but also emotional understanding of literary works. It is either a summary of knowledge or an aesthetic experience, reflecting inevitable development direction of literary studies.