A Discussion Of Jia Pingwa's Literary Exploration After 1990s

Jia Pingwa is one of the most productive, most influential as well as the most controversial contemporary writers in Chinese mainland. He won great fame and established himself as a great writer among readers due to his amazing productivity, unique literary style and many other literary achievements in the 1980's. However, the publication of Deserted City at the beginning of the 1990's brought about great negative effect and made him degrade greatly in society and among his readers as well. After this, though he still keeps his vigorous literary creativity and has finished and published several long novels, it is no easy a job to bring back his past brilliance for various reasons.It is a worthwhile subject to study this "Jia Pingwa phenomenon" which has an extensive influence and records and manifests the development and vicissitude of the contemporary literature. The reasons are as following. First, it will help improve Jia Pingwa's writing creativity based on the exploration of his success and failure. Second, it makes it possible to evaluate his literary achievements and establish his position in the history of literature, and on the whole to summarize the development of contemporary literature.This thesis is an attempt to discuss Jia Pingwa's literary exploration after 1990's. It is made up of three parts.Part one focuses on the imagism adhered to tradition. Jia Pingwa makes use of image as his aesthetic way to explore his surrounding world. Therefore, imagism rather than realism is key both to the study of Jia Pingwa's literary creativity and to his literary treasury. Image is, in brief, the symbol denoting meaning. The author of this thesis elaborates the importance of image in the history of Chinese aesthetics after general but systematic review and organization of some influential aestheticians' major aesthetic categories and propositions in the thousands of years' aesthetic history. Image is the core category of Chinese classical aesthetics. It represents the basic spirit of Chinese aesthetics, reveals the inner rule and basic contradiction of Chinese artistic creativity and reflects the deeper aesthetic mind and artistic modes of thinking of the Chinese people and the unique oriental charm. Jia Pingwa chooses imagism as his aesthetic way to observe his surrounding world for the following three reasons. To begin with, seen from his own cultural attainments, he has long been influenced by the traditional culture and classical aesthetics. Taoism in particular strongly dominated hissense of art after 1990s, and the image, initiated by Zhuangzi, is one of the major theories of Taoist aesthetics. Thus, profound traditional knowledge and classical aesthetic attainments encourage him to choose imagism. Next, seen from what is conveyed in his works, it is lyric rather than epic. Epic stresses grandeur and deepness while lyric emphasizes emotion and awareness. How instinct emerges in image coincides with how Jia Pingwa expresses his feelings in his works, which provides him with a naturally accepted way to create aesthetically. Then, seen from the goal of literary realization, Jia Pingwa's great ambition makes him to choose the most nationally represented form, image, which fully reflects the oriental thinking and aesthetic mode, to reach the greatest achievement both in art and in life.Part two mainly deals with the muddle and indistinct aesthetic style. After 1990s, Jia Pingwa endeavors to pursue the muddle and indistinct writing style. The main factors that formed the muddleness of his novels are the following: the influence of neo-realistic novels, the pursue of integration based on the philosophy of harmony of man with nature, the polysemy of image reflected in Taoist aesthetics and the vagueness of theme and characters. In the meantime, the major reasons why there exists indistinctness in his works are the combination of the universe and creative subject and the display of metaphysical infinity through the finity in real world.Part three concentrates on the exploration of transcendental literatu...