| The modern meaning of tradition can be defined as:things that carry on from generation to generation,including people's belief in various things,image about people and events and practices and systems.However,tradition is not changeless,but historic and relative.Tradition is inherited and created in modern subjective cognition and only reinterpreted and reaccepted tradition is of modern significance.In other words,determination of what is absorbed from the past is related to the modern condition.For South Korea,traditional discourse inserted between modernity and pre-modernity during the colonial period was suspended during the Korean War and appeared again in the mid-1950s.However,as South Korea longed desperately to get rid of social backwardness and realize modernization at that time,it negated its national tradition.Nevertheless,this situation was reversed in the 1960s where intellectuals were enthusiastic about pursuing Korean identity in various fields including politics,economy and culture etc.The field of literature was no exception.In the literary circles,anti-tradition in the 1950s was transformed into tradition seeking in the 1960s.In addition,lots of writers and works appealing to regard national tradition as creation spirit appeared in the 1960s.In the era of industrialization,affirmative recognition of national tradition in society and literary circles of South Korea was inseparable with its rapid development of industrialization.During this period,South Korea tried it best to follow the modernization program in the West,but made "their things" vanished.In order to remove side effects of developmentalism stressing reckless development of economy,people paid attention to traditional value.In addition,the Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea in 1965 made South Koreans worry about becoming a colony of Japan again,which also played a great role in seeking national tradition.Moreover,as a Japanese writer became a candidate of Nobel Prize in literature,it urged the literary world of South Korea to relate world literature with national literature in a new way and understand tradition again and call on recovery of literary subjectivity.China has also gone through a similar process of tradition recognition since its modernization.After the New Culture Movement,tradition was regarded as an element hindering modernization.During the Great Cultural Revolution,national tradition represented by the Confucian school suffered another heavy blow.People didn't objectively treat tradition until the reform and open-up in the late 1970s,followed by the cultural fever and rise of root-seeking literature.After the reform and open-up,China has been bound up in modernization construction and attempted to conduct reconstruction in various fields.Also,conflicts appear in the rapid process of modernization construction cannot be ignored.Especially,the most important characteristic of modernized discourse during this period was to analyze problems of China in dualization modes of China/West and tradition/modernity.However,this modernization process based on the Western model also caused many problems and evils.Hence,intellectuals started to explore relations between tradition and modernity.In the literary world,due to introduction of a great deal of Western literature,the mainstream of learning and carrying out Western modernism was formed.In this process,Chinese writers gradually realized that they seemed to lose their subjectivity as Chinese writers and ability of expressing local experience.Meanwhile,Gabriel Garcia Marquez,a Colombian writer,was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature,which influenced China's literary circles and made recovery of national literature and subjectivity become an important factor for pursuit of traditional value by root-seeking writers.According to simple analysis on development courses and backgrounds of pursuit of tradition in China and South Korea during industrialization above,though these two countries have different political systems and social historical backgrounds,they share a similar cognitive process of tradition.Centering on this point of view,this paper explained possibilities of comparison of traditional consciousness in novels by writers in these two countries and their meanings from two aspects.First,during the period of industrialization,both China and South Korea attempted to conduct creative transformation of tradition to revitalize and invigorate their tradition in new condition.Both China and South Korea need to face issues about tradition and modernity and tradition and national subjectivity and re-understand and re-accept their tradition from a modern standpoint.The common traditional understanding offers possibility of comparison and it is a significant study to explore how China and South Korea create harmonious relations between tradition and modernity and reflect national literature in communication of world literature by comparison.Second,both China and South Korea sought relations between tradition and modernity by lingering on relations between the subject and others.The other faced by intellectuals in these two countries was the Western modernity.In other words,tradition in these two countries was national and Oriental.The essence of tradition is inherent and that of prototype is general.Their tradition is not only a cultural characteristic of a nation,but also universal Eastern tradition in the East Asia cultural circle.For example,the Confucian tradition was regarded as resistance and obstacle of modernization in both China and South Korea and writers of both China and South Korea also called on Oriental tradition during the period of industrialization.Though these two countries are in the same the Eastern cultural circle,they also have local tradition and inherent tradition formed in their social and historical development.By comparison,common traditions recovered by these two countries can be found out,differences in their traditions,their localization processes and their different inherent traditions required by the same consciousness of problems can be understood.On this basis,this study expected to confirm the basic law of East Asian literature and re-investigate characteristics of East Asian literature.Due to the dialogue relationship between tradition and modernity and the subject consciousness of writers who had sensitive cognition of an era,national tradition was stressed during the period of transformation into modernity.Therefore,main object of this study included Li Wenqiu,Wen Chuntai and Han Shengyuan of South Korea and Jia Pingwa,Li Hangyu and Han Shaogong of China.Reasons for choosing them are as follows:First,these writers are representative writers who had tradition-oriented consciousness in the era of industrialization.Li Wenqiu,Wen Chuntai and Han Shengyuan are regarded as native writers in the 1970s.Li Wenqiu's works are rich in Confucian tradition,farming culture and oral tradition etc.It is believed that Wen Chuntai pursued roots of Korean history and expressed localized nostalgia.Han Shengyuan's novels are featured by localization.In addition,Han Shengyuan visualized Shaman consciousness initiated by Jin Dongli and constantly expanded unique tradition in culture of South Korea.As representative writers of root-seeking literature,Jia Pingwa,Li Hangyu and Han Shaogong not only showed various national traditions,but also endowed them with modern value.Second,it can be seen that there are comparable similarities between national tradition and Oriental tradition pursued by these writers,such as Confucian tradition sought by Li Wenqiu and Jia Pingwa,the traditional view of nature and thought of life by Wen Chuntai and Li Hangyu and Oriental intuitive thinking and mysterious cultures including Wu culture by Han Shengyuan and Han Shaogong.Furthermore,works of Li Wenqiu and Jia Pingwa,Wen Chuntai and Li Hangyu are of realism,while those of Han Shengyuan and Han Shaogong are of magic realism.There are also similarities in terms of manifestation modes of traditional consciousness.This study discussed what traditions should be selected in the modern context,how to endow them with modern value and how to deal with the reality by comparison of traditional consciousness reflected in novels of these six writers.In addition,this study classified writers in accordance with common characteristics of traditional consciousness and conducted comparison through a parallel study in a comparative study.Based on discussion above,this paper is divided into six chapters:Chapter one is an introduction.Chapter two investigated the background that both China and South Korea paid attention to tradition again during industrialization.By investigation,it was found that traditional discourse appeared in both countries was not for nostalgia,but for reflection of present and future and both countries were confronted with reflection of modernity and construction of national subjectivity.In Chapter three,traditional consciousness in novels by Li Wenqiu and Jia Pingwa was compared.Both Li Wenqiu and Jia Pingwa integrated Confucian value into their novel characters and described the soft heart of characters,which can be explained from two aspects.First,both Li Wenqiu and Jia Pingwa paid attention to the core value of Ren(Chinese:?),namely human is kind by nature.They thought that it is the most fundamental value that common people should have.The reason for this common ground is that material saturation and expansion appeared in both countries in the industrial age,leading to a trend of violating ethics and morality.In order to recover ethics and morality,Li Wenqiu and Jia Pingwa explored Confucian value again by characterizing characters.Second,the Confucian value reflected in works by Li Wenqiu and Jia Pingwa is not Li(Chinese:?),a Confucian value regarding as a model of relation setting.In other words,their works are not products of status hierarchy and patriarchy,for both writers struggled against political authoritarianism in the disguise of Confucianism.Their difference is that Li Wenqiu depicted the doctrine of human relationship on the basis of community,while Jia Pingwa focused on virtues of common people to reflect the doctrine of human relationship.In Li Wenqiu's novel,main narrative objects are people who have Confucian values and live in Guancun and symbiotic ethics and spiritual values of the human-relationship community are highlighted.Jia Pingwa's novel mainly describes ordinary lovers in Shangzhou rich in human interest,sets off Confucian human interest by virtues of the common people and depicts conflicts between emancipation of humanity of the common people and traditional values behind love.In Li Wenqiu's novel,with industrialization and urbanization,humanity is lost in the community that was rich in human interest originally.Due to lack of valuable principles and beliefs of life,the writer wanted to make the Confucian doctrine of human relationship become the spiritual pillar of this community.However,from a standpoint of the common people,Jia Pingwa expressed worries concerning changes of ethical values of the common people in Shangzhou in the course of modernization.He mainly discussed life of the common people and depicted new change of traditional morality through love between ordinary men and women.In respect of modern practicability,Li Wenqiu and Jia Pingwa have something in common.Both Li Wenqiu and Jia Pingwa described characters with subjective consciousness and ethic morality.Both of them created subjective characters with ethic morality to realize self-perfection.There's no conflict between their ethical consciousness and subjective consciousness.The reason for their similarity is that people oriented by Confucian values are generally not regarded as the main body in modern society and are closely related to recovery of subjectivity in the 1960s and 1970s in South Korea and awakening of subjectivity in the 1980s in China.In terms of their differences,Li Wenqiu opposed characters who don't change their faith over time and put into practice with ethics and morality to those who flaunt morality with words that are not matched by deeds and put interest first and stated the real ethical subject;while Jia Pingwa described common people with moral ethics as subjects of history and showed organic connections between individuals and communities through social practice with subjective initiative.Li Wenqiu wanted to criticize people who only talked about subjectivity and subject consciousness without practice and were self-centred and selfish in society of South Korea and the material theory of industrialization resulting in dehumanization.On the contrary,Jia Pingwa portrayed positive characters engaging in modernization construction during China's reform and open-up in the 1980s and criticized characters who were still stuck in feudal thought and the modern society affected by fetishism.Li Wenqiu and Jia Pingwa confirmed change of traditional values during industrialization and modernization and built their Confucian spirits.In the rapid course of industrialization,both of them expressed worries about excess and deficiency of humanity,paid attention to traditional Confucian values in both countries and explained and accepted Confucian values in a modern way,which is quite significant.In Chapter four,traditional consciousness in Wen Chuntai and Li Hangyu's novels was compared.Their novels reflect a traditional view of nature to create harmony between humans and nature.The traditional view of nature of China and South Korea is a monistic world view of organic connections between humans and nature.In their novels,they treated human consciousness and natural quality equally without discrimination and expressed organic world ideology.In their novels,destruction of nature is extended to destruction of human life,forming a causal relationship.In order to establish a monistic world view in novels,Wen Chuntai and Li Hangyu appealed for traditional life with a monistic world view of organic connections between humans and nature by describing destruction of human life caused by industrialization,leading to reflection on the modern mechanical view of nature.In spite of general characters,there are differences between them.Wen Chuntai's novel emphasizes destruction of community life caused by destruction of nature and loss of hometown.Li Hangyu focused on change of people's life styles resulted from destruction of nature.In Wen Chuntai's novel,with the development of industrialization,people construct dams and factories,leading to disappearance of traditional life of communities and broken communities and families.In his novel,people's happiness cannot be guaranteed,leading to many hardships in communities,and sexual devastation of women destroys the family.Wen Chuntai expressed that destruction of nature can cause destruction of community life directly in his novel,while Li Hangyu started with destruction and change of nature to show change of life styles of people depending on nature.In Li Hangyu's novel,the Gechuanjiang River is developed into a tourist attraction and the polluted river quietly changes local people's customs and life styles with the massive construction of modern buildings.Differences of their novels were caused by different industrial backgrounds of China and South Korea and different modern mechanical views of nature created by the two writers.The historical background of South Korea is the sharp population movement from rural areas to urban areas since industrialization in the 1970s,making rural communities fall apart,and the industry-oriented policy of economic development launched by the government resulted in severe destruction of nature.Wen Chuntai visited people who lost their hometown because of dam construction projects and integrated their stories into his novel.To Wen Chuntai,it is modern civilization that destroys the harmonious traditional society of humans and nature and makes people in Lingdang Village lose their hometown.In the 1980s,China went through rapid development of modernization.With the increasingly obscure boundary between rural and urban areas,modern civilization made folk customs become old,leading to increasingly sharp conflicts between tradition and modernity.Meanwhile,Li Hangyu felt deeply sorry about disappearance of customs such as beach swimming,painting rooms and fishing in the Gechuanjiang region.What's the modern value of the nature-oriented tradition represented by the theory that man is an integral part of nature?Both Wen Chuntai and Li Hangyu expressed that they yearned for harmony between humans and nature by depicting images insisting on traditional life.Both Wen Chuntai and Li Hangyu indicated that their yearning for nature and traditional life was realized by seeking human existence value by "Li Zhaoren" and "the last one" respectively.The reason for their common ground is that both writers regarded nature-oriented tradition as spiritual values,which is contrast to material values represented by modern civilization.However,Wen Chuntai integrated traditional life thought of South Korea,namely hate of aesthetic characteristics,into nature-oriented life consciousness of Li Zhaoren.The life consciousness about hate is not a defeatism emotion,but people's willpower and vitality expressed through resistance against the modern society.Li Hangyu added traditional life thought of China,Taoism,into nature-oriented life consciousness of the last one.Taoism in his novel is not negative and does not avoid realistic emotions.In addition,it is individuals' freedom value expressed through resistance against the rapidly developing modern civilization denying individual values.Meanwhile,it also reflects Taoism and accepts modern civilization by understanding the natural order.In Wen Chuntai's novel,due to loss of nature,the common people become confused after being removed.The writer held a positive attitude toward the firm will of the common people,namely hate,a means of overcoming the reality,and nature-oriented traditional life in his novel.Li Hangyu revealed his nostalgia of traditional life where humans and nature are harmonious and agreed that tradition must be replaced by modernity and modern civilization is irresistible in his novel.In Chapter five,traditional consciousness in Han Shengyuan and Han Shaogong's novels was compared.There are similarities between Han Shengyuan and Han Shaogong in respect of mythical thought in Oriental linear thinking,manifested from two aspects.First,both of them created a mythical world through mythology containing national archetypes.Han Shengyuan manifested the primitive vitality of characters through mythology,while Han Shaogong described the primitive vitality by the myth about Xingtian.Second,mythical thought runs through their novels.Expression of metaphorical mythology makes mythological worlds created by the two writers irrational.In irrational worlds created by the two writers,they responded to scars and development in history through primitive vitality of mythological figures.Myths created by them are not individual but national.In Han Shengyuan' novel,individuals,abandoned villages and the Korean nation born again through a sacrificial ceremony and the writer expressed holiness of the nation and human beings.Similarly,in Han Shaogong's novel,individuals,Jitouzhai Village and the nation regain a new life by sacrificing sacrificial ceremonies.Reasons for their similarities are as follows.First,both of them tried to arouse collective consciousness and national tradition by mythology,a product of national collective unconsciousness.Second,both of them attempted to respond to modern humanism by mythical thought in Oriental linear thinking and reflect on the rational world of modern civilization by creating mythological worlds.Third,both of them tried to manifest vitality and sanctity of national archetypes by in-depth deconstruction of national culture and creation of national myths.Their differences are shown from two aspects.First,in terms of prototypes of myths and utterance,Han Shengyuan designed a guard image for the variant character in utterance,while Han Shaogong designed a fool image for the variant character of a myth.In addition,Han Shengyuan dealt with contradictions in myths and history by reconciliation,while Han Shaogong ended his novel with defeat or death.That is to say,Han Shengyuan appeared for healthy vitality in national myths,while Han Shaogong for abnormal vitality.This is because Han Shengyuan wanted to remove historical scars by creating myths,while Han Shaogong reviewed deep structure of national culture and explored secrets of national development from a modern perspective.One common ground of the two writers is that both of them regarded superstitious Wu culture as the root of the nation,for Wu is the most essential traditional form of culture originating in ancient times in both China and South Korea.Wu,representing the folk in literature,became holy again in the 1970s in South Korea and in the 1980s in China.Both of the two writers tried to seek the root of the nation essentially.However,there are also differences in this respect.Han Shengyuan inherited the aesthetic tradition of Wu in the "Abandoned Village" and internalized Wu values as national spirit in the first person in the "Fire Ship".On the contrary,Han Shaogong sought self-regression in Wu-Chu culture in western Hunan,which was the cultural root in his opinion,in "Endless Way".In "Bababa",he described the Wu belief in in Wu-Chu space in Jitouzhai Village in the third person,but ended with collective failure of Wu belief,indicating a certain distance between the writer and his Wu-Chu space.In general,in Han Shengyuan's novel,Wu is manifested by images of wizards,while Han Shaogong by Wu belief in in Wu-Chu space.Moreover,Han Shengyuan internalized Wu values as national spirit,but conversely,Han Shaogong revealed superstition and ignorance in Wu belief.There are two respects of reasons for the difference.First,in the course of inheritance of Wu culture,there are differences between the two countries.In South Korea,though Wu belief is not the orthodox religion,it has played a role similar to a religion.However,Wu belief has been driven to the edge zone in China.In other words,religion is less important in China than that in South Korea and localized Wu culture in South Korea has had inherent traditional attributes.Second,there's understanding difference between the two writers.Han Shengyuan approached Wu culture through popular tradition and attempted to apply the Wu spirit to resistance against Western rationalist civilization and Christianity.Han Shaogong carried out new investigation on non-standard culture in modern civilization to seek the root of the nation,which is why he only conducted cultural judgment.Chapter six is the conclusion part.According to analysis in chapters above,this section summed up traditional consciousness of and differences between China and South Korea.First,tendentiousness of tradition and rural areas of these six writers is unified.In other words,the dualistic tradition/modernity structure amounts to the rural/urban form.For them,rural areas include the community space of national tradition.During the period of industrialization,traditional community space fell apart and farming culture disappeared because of impacts of modern material civilization,making these writers yearn for tradition and rural areas.Oriental traditional space is rural hometowns.Oriental nations with strong homing instinct pursue the lost tradition or the gradually losing tradition and their hometowns at the same time,which is also the pursuit of the national root.Second,all of these six writers regarded traditions as spiritual values,which are contrast to material values.These spiritual values refer to Confucian values,organic natural values,Oriental intuition thinking,Wu values,all of which are contrast to common customs and material,indicating the people-oriented concept.Third,traditions were affirmatively accepted under resistant discourse in the 1970s in South Korea,while traditions were critically accepted under enlightenment discourse in the 1980s in China.In order to oppose antinomy of capitalism in the 1970s,Li Wenqiu,Wen Chuntai and Han Shengyuan actively accepted traditional values collapsing rapidly.Referring to modern civilization,Jia Pingwa,Li Hangyu and Han Shaogong reevaluated national characters and spirit and pointed out that national characters should be modified to realize enlightenment.In conclusion,review and appeal of traditions by writers of China and South Korea were not because of emotional nostalgia or rejection of modernization,but exploration of traditions for better modernization.In respect of both literature and culture,these writers adhered to the idea that "what belongs to a nation belongs to the world",reviewed national traditions and pursued modernization on the basis of valuable traditions,which is of great significance for harmony between tradition and modernity.On this basis,comparative research on structure of East Asian national literature is also of great significance. |
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