The Fourth Representative Conference Of Literature And Art And The Transformation Of The Contemporary Literature Structure

The Fourth Representative Conference of Literature and Art(FRCLA),held in 1979 when the transformation of Chinese economy,politics and culture was at a crucial moment,also the biggest,highest-ranked,and most complicated literary event since the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee held in 1978,has exerted a complex and profound impact on the development of contemporary literature and culture.This thesis,viewed from social transformation theory and the over sixty-year-long history of contemporary literature,revisits the historical moment of the FRCLA,explores the complex relationship between the Conference and the literary transformation of the 1980s so as to grasp the nature and historical and cultural connotation of the Conference.This dissertation consists of four chapters.In the Introduction,in the light of the striking contrast between the content and the historical representation of the Conference drawn from historical documents and related literary history,I will first state the reason that I undertook this research project and its value for literary history,culture and reality.Then I will present and analyze previous research achievements concerning the FRCLA and further justify the feasibility,research objectives and value of this project.Last,I will construct the outline and research methodology after detecting the limitations of previous studies.The main body of the thesis includes chapter one to chapter four.In Chapter one,I will analyze the social and cultural background of the FRCLA in terms of the main stream ideology transformed from revolution to construction,focus of literary policy from "binaries" to"varieties",the political and cultural ideology shifted from "left" or "right" to multiple fission as well as change of social psychology from Irrational to Rational,so as to sort out the"invisible" socio-cultural paradigm and the vicissitudes of "transition and transformation"behind the Conference.Chapter two deals with the historical phenomenon of the FRCLA diachronically including sorting out its background sources,restoring its complex picture of different phases and facets and summarizing its basic features in terms of the paradox of apparent consistence and inner divergence,so as to detect its historical truth with basic historical and theoretical evidence.Accordingly,the main concern of this chapter falls on the analysis of the "paradox" of the Conference including firstly sorting out its historical conditions and causes,visible driving force and invisible obstacles and secondly detecting the "human relations" through the formation of Chinese Literature and Art Association,its members and the Conference report,especially the stage-and-off-stage texts of Zhouyang' s report,and thirdly the whole picture of the conference including the similarities and differences between the late Deng Xiaoping' s congratulatory speech and Zhouyang' s primary report as well as the complicated collective psychology of writers and hence the divergences caused by both sides.Chapter three and four analyzes the literary structure of the 1980s and its vicissitudes.Chapter four concerns the complex relationship between the FRCLA and the literary transformation of the 1980s including the freedom and constraints literary policy exerted upon literary activities,the diachronical analysis of the relationship between the Conference and literary paradigm and tendency of the 1980s and the complicated relationship between the Conference and the transformation of literary ideology of the 1980s.Chapter five addresses the complex relationship between the Conference and the paradigmatic transformation of literary criticism of the 1980s through looking at the adjustment and reconstruction of critical paradigm carried out by the Conference.The Conclusion proposes ideas on contemporary literary structure inspired by the Conference.