Research On Congwen Shen's Letters (1949-1988)

Congwen Shen can be named special in the history of Chinese Literature. Before the year 1949, he engaged in literature writing, and made a great achievement. After 1949, he gradually dropped out the literary world for various reasons, and began to engage in historical relic research, in which he also made abdunt accomplishment. He is indeed a clinging pioneer.The research on Congwen Shen developed despite twists and turns as well. Although it has already reached a certain height and width, the author here found that there is less attention paid to the forty years after 1949, during which Congwen Shen abandoned literature and turned to the historical relic research. Therefore, the publishment of the Colleted Edition of Congwen Shen by Beiyue Art Press in 2002 made the great number of letters, the "potential" writing texts, come out, which made it possible for us to get to understand Congwen Shen in a more complete and deeper way.This paper tries to arrange the letters and correspondences of Congwen Shen. In the first chapter, a brief introduction of the letters of Congwen Shen is presented, including the distribution of the time and an analysis on the addressees of the letters, which is a general understanding on his letters. In Chapter Two, it has a deeper and intensive research on the content of Shen's letters, which is a special expression of the intellectuals. It tries to go deeper into the content of Shen's letters and studies more carefully, and goes closer to Shen so as to understand his self-expression in the special time, from the perspectives of the relationship between men of letters and the new China, the real recording of "collapse" and "recovery", the deep affection and care to his relatives and friends as well as his hometown, and the poetic narration on daily life. The third chapter focuses on the relationship between Shen's letters and literature, including the appeal to literature and the literariness from the letters, and it further understands Shen's affection to literature so as to go further into Shen's inner world.Through this research, the paper tries to restore the psychological process of this master in literature and profound memory given from that special time as well. It also tries to build a tridimensional figure of Congwen Shen after the year 1949, and to reveal the significance of Congwen Shen, an abundant and special creature, to the 20th century Chinese culture.