Hero-writing And Confucian Tradition In Contemporary Chinese Literature

After the PRC was founded,literature of the 1950-70s,in order to serve new-democactic development and socilaist construction,under the regulation of politics and its own collaboration generated a tendency of making its literary characters,especially its protagonists,heroes or heroines.As a multi-level literary expression,hero-writing texts,on the one hand,showed the state ideology and willpower through portraying heroic characters;on the other hand,they hid many heterogeneous elements other than the state ideology within its non-heroic characters.This means hero-writing texts reflected different social classes' ideologies fairly comprehensively,making it an ideal corpus through which to analyze the general social thoughts of the time.Since Marxism with Chinese characteristics overwhelmingly dominated the ideological sphere of Chinese society in the 1950-70s,academic researchers have ignored other hidden social thoughts enveloped in it for a long time.China continues its transition from a traditional society to a modern one after the foundation of the PRC,which also indicates that Chinese society has still been under the influences of Confucian tradition.The image of the "people's hero",which hero-writing texts in the 1950-70s sought to depict,was a key component in the state's discourse,and with a core value of collectivism,served a moral discipline function in society.Moral discipline made a connection between hero-writing texts and Confucian tradition.The connotative meaning of the "people's hero"”image was complex and contradictory,concealing an adapted heritage from Confucian tradition.The social life which hero-writing texts described showed some continuation and heritage from the Confucian traditional version of small peasant society,patriarchal clan system and social ideal,indicating that the 1950-70s' society,even though under the control and regulation of the powerful Marxist ideology,still hid an image of traditionally Confucian social life.The fate of Confucian tradition in the 1950-70s was mainly its repression and impairment under Marxist ideology,but it was also strengthened in a sense during this period with the return of its social foundation.Confucianism was a philosophy,which had a theoretical structure of a great whole.Its manifestation and the basis for its compatibility with society,was the natural and independent great-whole form that traditional Chinese society possessed.The deliberate closing-off of society in the 1950-70s,to some extent,constituted a return to the traditionally social form of a great whole.Since reform and opening-up,the process of globalization has re-opened this "great whole" social form,and made China a part society linked to the only single entity of the world again.Confucianism with "a great whole”structure was no longer compatible to the society because of the transformation of the social form.During this new era,hero-writing texts,which were famous for their collectivist value orientation and characteristic moral discipline,declined dramatically.Literary writing reveals a tendency to express personal desire and abandon its orientation towards social morality.Literature in this period lost its designated social task of providing moral discipline,and to a large extent,came back to literature itself.The society has met an overall economic turn,with a spiritual crisis in humanities and a moral predicament followed.Confucian rejuvenation appeared in the 1990s under this background.A sect of New Confucianism in Mainland China has expressed a concept of "political Confucianism" which tries to intervene in politics just like the traditional old times did.This train of thought in contemporary Chinese society was perfectly recorded and reflected by literature's hero-writing texts,and it will continue to do so.