On The Adult-like Presentation Of The Fairy Tales Written By Zhang Tianyi

In the vast collection of the research on Chinese literature, studies on children's literature always seem to be on the border or outside of the mainstream of literature. And studies on fairy tales, which is a branch of children's literature, are lagging behind. Among the insufficient research papers, those on the fairy tales written by Zhang Tianyi mainly focus on the discovery of Children as human beings, assuming that he is another peak of fairy tales after Ye Shengtao. None of them have critically analyzed the defects of Zhang Tianyi's fairy tales caused by the elements of culture and the era. On the basis of admiring Zhang's success on creating his fairy tales, the thesis focuses on the study of the historical necessities of the orientation of adult-like expression, the actual expression during the process of the writing and the worthwhile experience. The thesis can be divided into three parts: Part one The obvious moralization orientation.Zhang's adult-like expression in his fairy tales writing comes from his moralized thoughts. Many elements should be responsible for this.i The accumulation of the traditional culture. Centered on Confucianist thoughts, Chinese traditional culture attaches great importance to cultivating one's morality and emphasizes the importance of moralization in forming the national psychological state. The accumulation of the collective unconsciousness acclaims the moralized function of culture and leads the fairy tales to treat "moralization" as a very important hand and promotes the author to survey the children's world from the standpoint of adults.ii. Times' elements.Chinese children's literature was born from "May 4th movement". The main stream of enlightenment and national salvation promotes the birth of children's literature and makes the children's literature have a strong feeling of social responsibility, which makes children's books be filled with "gray shadow of adults".iii. The author's selection.At that time, the writers of fairy tales are all adults. They are looking forward to delivering to the children their thoughts and feelings in their life and untrue ideals by the form of fairy tales. Zhang was no exception. He is so confident with simulated life and pays too much attention to the moralized meaning in his own works. While he thought his works had touched children's soul, there had been too much moralized expressions.Part Two Story telling and moralizationZhang looked on fairy tales as one way of educating children. Although he tried his best to tell children stories squatting down on his heels, he gradually shifted to overlook and discipline the children. This mainly lies in the following:i. Sticking to the creating stand based on the reality. Zhang wants to make the children know the unbearable social reality and mature earlier. As an effect, at the same time of realizing the aim of moralization, "the innocent beauty" disappears because of too much adult's lessons.ii. The angle of narration is far from the children's soul. Zhang's fairy tales writing inherited the tradition of Chinese classical narrative literature. He usually narrated from the omnipotent third-person angle. He did not approach the children's feelings but observed children's world coolly and sensibly at the same time he educated children from the standpoint of adult.iii. Adultlization of children's interests.Compared to his contemporaries, Zhang has his outstanding aspects. He uses narrative measure that is full of exaggerated and strange imagination and dreams but he usually made children dream adult's dream. It is only a way to decorate morals that are criticizing reality and disciplining children with little interesting things. Interest became another tool that delivers morals. Part Three Heavy imaginary wings.Without imagination, there will be no fairy tales. However, imagination in Zhang's fairy tales burdens too much adult's ideas. Through writing fairy tales Zhang is constructing adult's moral system, social rules and human ideal and delivering the imagination of moral system to the children. H...