Local Consciousness And Literature In Late Qing Dynasty And Early Republic Period

This paper investigates the problem of local consciousness and role of literature in the local found in late Qing Dynasty and early Republic period,and points out that the local consciousness as a social and cultural trend of thought was widely reflected in the literature in late Qing Dynasty.The relationship between local consciousness and literature is not one-way influencing and reflecting,but a complex interactive relationship.On the one hand,the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic period literature reflects the social local consciousness thought;on the other hand,the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic literature is not only the passive reflection but also actively participates in,even leads the local consciousness thought in many cases.This paper discusses five aspects of the problem as follows.The first chapter"imagination and critique of local politics" discusses the relationship between the political expression of local consciousness and the new novel.Before and around the rise of new novel,based on the local consciousness especially the provincialism,people design the establishment of national scheme via local politics.Accordingly,the new novel also opened the national and local imagination.The new novel started from political novel "new Chinese future" takes the "new place" as a starting point for future "new Chinese".It also takes the system of local autonomy as local politics and policy,with the ideal person being practical subject.But the ideal local imagination and national imagination tend to keep silent after real political impact.Since the system of local autonomy implemented in the late Qing Dynasty,it did not achieve the desired results,but brought a series of social conflict.The novelist who praised the ideal comes to criticizing the reality,the defects in the election and the implementation steps from a moral standpoint,and depicts a group of competent gentry,wicked gentry and other type of plane figure.The second chapter "'national language' trend of thought in the dialect and the dialect writing" focus on the language performance of the local consciousness.People begin to realize the importance of the "Mandarin"(a common national language)in the pursuit of nationality.Forming a national language beyond the local Mandarin has become the core topic of language change.Mandarin and Mandarin writing becomes the ideal choice.But Mandarin has not become the legal language and has not spread to all parts of the country.With the goal of enlightment,many places take the bottom-up strategy to achieve the aim of national language.They first practice the dialect Pinyin and dialect vernacular,and then complete the unified language goal.They try to hold a balance between local and national.In this context,the scholars in the late Qing Dynasty advocate vernacular literature under the framework of Enlightenment.And there have been many dialect words in Beijing,Shanghai,Guangzhou and other places.But the Mandarin dialect is the monopoly language,dialect is always at the edge.So that the dialect writing is limited to enlightenment and entertainment functions.Dialect writing stands for a local way which is different with the mainstream literature.The third chapter "the exploration and the utilization of local historic culture" studies the relationship between the culture and literature of the local consciousness.Because of the driving of local awareness,many places assemble and publicize the local culture,trace the source of the local culture,prove the connection of the Han culture and local culture to affirming the importance of place in the country.At the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic.literature also involves in the excavation of the local culture.The local historical biography often record country sages.Especially in the stimulating of nationalism,people devote to excavate obscured adherents of Song and Ming Dynasty,and position characters in the framework of village and country.Scholars are keen to explore the local literature,especially late Ming literature which was banned in the past.As the "evil voice" which resists the Manchu,local literature directly serves the politics.As the "authentic history",local literature becomes the material of notes.This political writing also leads to type and rhetoric hero image stylization.The fourth chapter "pastiche and explore to local songs" focus on the relationship between literature and folk culture.People not only explore and use local elite culture,but also pay attention to the ballads.All ballads are prominent in enlightenment.They were widely imitated in the literary and art press and the vernacular newspapers,but their value has rarely been recognized.The ballads of pastiche in this period,just imitate folk forms,namely sentence pattern,melody,and change the original local content into the universal enlightenment sense.The fifth chapter "local found of the 'May fourth' New Literature" tries to explore the trend of the artistic's regionalism by comparison.The artistic's regionalism prompts the litterateurs care the regional,care the dialect,traditional literati,folk literature and other aspects,and used as the basis for construction of the nationality,personality of the New Literature.Firstly,we take Zhou Zuoren as a case to study his discover of regional traditional literati,local literature as him resources of literary creation and theory construction.He provided one type of traditional resource for new literature,especially modern essay,quoted lots of country sages' writings in his essays to constructing the new literature.And when he contacted new literature to traditional literature,he makes local sages as the most important previous coordinate.Secondly,In the matter of ballads,new literature writers confirmed the value of ballads in literature and folklore aspects.They collected ballads in their hometown and periphery places,and formed a large-scale Ballads Movement which put ballads as the direction of new poetry.But the breadth and depth cannot be overestimated.Only few men involved this movement,and most people just created this kind of poetry in the occasional spirit.And the dialect and tone learning which stopped at advocation didn't become the language and music basis of new poetry.Finally,In the matter of dialect,new writers construct the Mandarin through literature.They take dialects as important language resources and parts of Mandarin and affirm the equal position of dialect literature and Chinese literature.But because of many reasons,dialect literature only stays in the theory level,and is seldom put into practice.