The Anthropological Writing Of Rural World In Mo Yan's Fictions

In Mo Yan's fictions,local knowledge of the rural world of Han ethical group has been presented in the form of literature through an in-depth anthropological description.On the basis of a profound knowledge of anthropological theories concerned and a classified summary of the studies on Mo Yan's fictions from the perspective of culture and anthropology home and abroad,this dissertation analyzes all the fictions concerned rural world written by Mo Yan.In this dissertation,with the combination of the kaleidoscope of the rural world constructed by language,wordage,plot and story of the interior text of fictions,it probes into local knowledge of the rural world of Han ethical group in Mo Yan's unique narrative paradigm through close reading,thus from page to reality,fulfilling the discovery of farmers and in the meanwhile discovering local knowledge.Firstly,this dissertation sets Mo Yan's fictions in the study field of mainstream literature of Han ethical group.Through a comparative study between the imagination and writing of the rural world of Han ethical group in mainstream literature and Mo Yan's in-depth anthropological description,it aims to explore the anthropological characteristics and manifestations in Mo Yan's fictions.Secondly,through an in-depth interpretation of Mo Yan's fictions,this dissertation studies family ethical relations of the rural world such as husband and wife,father and son.as well as mother and son described by Mo Yan.In Mo Yan's anthropological description,the union of a couple in the rural world still follows the moral principles of being arranged by one's parents,fulfilling filial duty and the perpetuation of a family name.Such kind of marriage is relatively stable as it has been formed orderly due to obedience.However,disorder lurks in the orderly state of marriage bonds as emotional support and communication between a couple are based on moral principles instead of love.Besides,the relations between father and son or mother and son in the rural world is far from intimate.not as illustrated in western families in which parents and children are having fun together from time to time and expressing love frankly.Of course,the rural parents of Han ethical group have their own method to raise and educate their children.In Mo Yan's writing,patriarchal culture has been shrouded whereas rural mothers behind the purdah are foregrounded,who express themselves in the narration of hardships in supporting the family and raising the children.Such rural mothers in obscurity become the focus of attention with a humanistic concern.Thirdly,through the explanation and interpretation of plenty of fictions and essays written by Mo Yan,this dissertation studies an integrated growth record of the rural people,constructed by Mo Yan through an in-depth anthropological description,from pregnancy,birth,growth,life choice and marriage,etc.From the recollections of his own life experience and personal growth in the rural world,with literary fabrication and imagination as well as an unprecedented in-depth description,Mo Yan represents the food,entertainments,emotions,nature and performance of the rural people in their infancy,childhood as well as adolescence at that particular time in plenty of fictions.With a minor status in literature and a light way of writing,he illustrates a minor group which has long been shrouded by mainstream culture and has no voice,leaving readers space of reflection as well as pondering on the major force endowed with the group by culture.Fourthly,this dissertation studies the relations between farmers and animals described in Mo Yan's fictions.In previous mainstream culture,little efforts has been made in describing the relations between farmers and rural domestic animals as Mo Yan does.In his recollections of rural experience and impression,through fabrication and imagination,Mo Yan vividly incorporate rural domestic animals into the text of his fictions.In addition,this dissertation analyzes the worship for rural animals described in Mo Yan's fictions.Rural animals such as locusts,foxes and wolfs bring damage to farmers,but farmers are in awe of them.Awe derives from fear,thus worship comes into being.During a long historic period when rituals of Zhou and Confucianism has been respected and worshiped as a religion in mainstream culture,farmers in rural world still held on to ancient wizard thoughts and worshiped animal as totem.They has had a harmonious relations with animals in the expanse of rural areas.Therefore.Mo Yan has presented a hannonious landscape of rural ecological anthropology through his fictions.Fifthly,this dissertation studies super-naturalistic belief in rural world described in Mo Yan's fictions.Farmers in rural world not only have their worshiped animal totems,but also keep a devout veneration for their ancestors under the discipline of deeply-rooted filial piety culture and clan culture.In many of his fictions,Mo Yan illustrates ceremonial burials which best representing belief in ancestor's spirit and routine rites of ancestor worship on specific festival occasions.Besides,in advanced modern civilization,while modern generation has already recognized the truth behind ghosts or monsters and regarded them as feudal superstition,farmers still stubbornly persist in such super-naturalistic forces accompanying their production and daily life.Through an in-depth anthropological description of super-naturalistic belief in rural world,Mo Yan unveils rural magical belief and presents customs and beliefs in the rural world under a cultural context which has been shrouded and ignored by mainstream culture as well as a global cultural context in which writers of different ethical groups have concerned about and written their own national culture.In his fictions,with thoughtless recollections and without transferring cultural perspective as well as conducting field investigation as a convenience,Mo Yan,as a literary producer,carries out an in-depth description of the rural world of Han ethical group which should have been done by anthropologists.However,a variety of anthropological factors in the fictions are presented in the form of literature through language,wordage and story of the fictions themselves.Therefore,in the concluding part of this dissertation,it analyzes the close integration of the unique art of narration in Mo Yan's fictions and the anthropological writing of rural world,so as to explore the value of Mo Yan's fictions in literary history.Mo Yan,s anthropological writing contributes to paradigm shift of contemporary literary creation of Han ethical group through its focus on marginal group and writing of it as well as its standpoint and perspective of daily experience.Meanwhile,Mo Yan's in-depth anthropological description of the rural world,along with writers of different ethical groups on the stage of contemporary world literature under a global context,constructs the diversity of human culture.In this dissertation,through close reading of texts and the study from interior to exterior,it follows the research trend from works to texts,wordage and the rural world within the words,aiming to seek anthropological factors of the rural world illustrated in Mo Yan's fictions.With unique elements of "literariness".Mo Yan earnestly establishes a fictional rural world from his memory and imagination in the texts.Meanwhile,he provides a variety of local knowledge of the rural world through all the true and logical poetic expressions conforming to real life in his world of texts,and discovers farmers in the form of literary as well.