The Leaning Towards Youthful Literature

Campus novel, with campus life as its theme, is the modern style of novel permeated with youthful qualities. Youthfulness is the indispensable element for this kind of novels. In content, this kind of quality is represented by the growth of the young people. The text, characterized by the youthful qualities, is intended to expose the youth-moving trend and to show that the growing youth group is characterized by the special living activities and states, namely, their special ideas on life, emotional states, thinking patterns, will power and behavior etc. This special quality is textually characterized by its experimental features. It is seldom influenced by all manner of stereotyped artistic techniques and ideas. It is free of sectarian bias, that is, it tries to write down whatever appears in their mind. Wherever their thinking goes, their pen takes down. Anyway it boils down to one sentence: this kind of literature is intended to "write down what I think of with my own hand". In China, with the birth of modern education, campus novel has begun to come into being. It has been growing along with the development of Chinese modern novels. This type of novels plays an important role in the history of modern and contemporary literature. The traces of campus novels are always found in the modern and contemporary literature, even in the key period of its development. Since 1990s, the overleaping development of educational undertakings and marketing economy and the popularization of computer networks lead to the wonderful rise of campus literature. Campus literature, originally a marginalized literature, is being centralized at fast speed, which brings about an apparent prosperity. This prosperous state is exposed by such aspects asthe increasing number of writers, the flourishing art circles, and the varying publishing magazines and papers. With a broad view of the development of campus literature in the recent period of China, it presents the following three distinctive kinds. The first one, originating from the traditional campus novel in 1930s and carrying on the spirits of Songs of the Youth in 1950s and Collegial Dormitory for Female Students in 1980s, mainly demonstrates the love and understanding of the youth for life, their strong expectations and yearnings for the beautiful life and their loyalty to motherland and people. The basic style is clear and pure, with idealistic optimism to create youthful ideals. The second one is mainly concerned about dealing with the people living at the lowest stratum of society or the persons with the weak strength or the people with youthful quality and vigor to reveal the hardships of living and the hidden sufferings of the people living at the bottom rung of social ladder. It is probable for this point to be the developing point of the future campus novels. The third one, another pioneering writing, continues the decadent works of the writers of Compositional Organization during the May 4th period and the betrayal style of Non-thematic Musical Variations to mainly express such feelings as loneliness, betrayal, decadence, melancholy, and narcissism of the young generation after 1980s. On the basis of this, the times and society at their heart are reflected in their works. This type of campus novels has its predominant position at the current time.Comparatively speaking, campus novels in the recent years present some new artistic qualities, which are mainly realized in this aspects such as the understanding of times and society in the perspective of youthful eyes, the creation of the extraordinary images, the self-satisfactory artistic innovation, the cultivation of new writers for special styles etc. In spite of the great development of campusnovels in recent years, there exist some problems, such as the trend of imitation, commercialization, lengthening, and the shortage of literal criticism. These negative factors have the seriously bad influence upon the sound development of campus novels.Taking into consideration the various arguments about the blame or praise of the camp...