On The Narrative Of Shen Congwen's Xiangxi Fictions

Shen Congwen is a special one in the history of Chinese modern literature. He put more emphasis on the form of his works with continously study, and at the same time, he illustrated his own thoughts by choosing different types of writing. This essay will analyze his fictions about Xiangxi from three angles belowed: narrative perspective narrative structure and imagery,joining with his different emotions and thoughts in every period.There are threee sections in this essay, not including the introduction and the conclusion.The introduction mainly discusses narrative. The narrative of Shen's fictions has no autonomy, and is connected with his emotions and thoughts.The first section-the narrative perspective, which has three levels. The early stage of his Xiangxi fictions mainly use childern's perspective in the first-person form, which will be useful to the narrator to narrate the story and the narratee to receive the story. The happy memories in childhood can confort his inner loneliness and inferiority. The middle age of the fictions use another perspective according to different themes. Shen uses the third-person perspective in this works to descirbe the lives of Xiangxiese in 1920s-1930s, by which is apt to narrate objectively. But we can still see endless sorrows and sympathies beneath the quietness. "Xiangxi in Dream" used omni-directioning perspective to illustrate free love between young people in Xiangxi. Also, it suggests Shen's longing for love. "The Legend of Xiangxi'VCity in Border" and"The Long River" have their distinguish perspective. Shen tried to return the first-person perspective in the later part of his Xiangxi fictions, but as he was too far away from Xiangxi in herat, and made the first-person perspective used in the early and later part more different from each other.The second section, the structure of narration. There are also three levels here. The narrative structure which relates with time points out that the he narrated the stories revesely in the early fictions about Xiangxi, the middle aged fictions used the Present Continous Tense to make a comparison between the life in Xiangxi and the urban life at that time. The low speed in narrating results in the slow rhythm of Shen's works, which is in accordence with the life style in Xiangxi. The spacial narrative structure mainly discusses the different space model in "City in Border"and "The Long River". The third level is the falsehood and reality in his fictions which reflected his love for beauty.The third section is imagery. There are three kinds of imageries. The most important one is nature imagery which has many factions: describing characture, reflecting the minds of people, settling scenes and background for people's activities and outlining the characters. The social and cultral imageries uses "Houses" to illustrate his ideas about that nature resist culture. The relationship imagery reflects the indifferences between individuals, and also reflects Shen's loneliness in his subconsciousness.The conclusion tells about the aim of this essay. Just like Shen's research in style, this essary is to try to find a new way to study the form of Shen's works systemetical-ly. The significance of this essay is it's experimental quality.