The Literary World Of Small Cities And Towns

In the society structure of modern times, there existed a world of small cities and towns. Its character was very obvious different from metropolis and village. The world of small cities and towns had a dual character of metropolis and village, so it became a bridge that linked contemporary culture with traditional culture. It also became a space that various civilizations fought and collide. Conflicts between the new and the old put on the stage continuously that the world should be a research object. The literary world of Chinese modern small cities and towns was unique scenery of modern novel. It is worthwhile taking the trouble to study its floweriness folk custom, vivid characterization, and complicated culture. A group of intellectuals, who came from the small towns and influenced by the metropolitan culture, expressed their thinking about the present conditions of society and life, as well as the expectation about the future in a certain kind of way which was different from other types of literature. From the beginning of this century, intellectuals were active in planning how to defend their motherland. In literary works, the writer either described the backwardness of the small cities and towns from different aspects or made contrastive analysis on sharp differences between the beautiful landscape in the towns and the chaos of the metropolitan influenced by the western culture. By analyzing the small cities and towns novels of the modern society, we can see that this literary world is so vigorous as the urban novels. Actually it is also different from rural novels. Not only can we perceive the unique style in aesthetic objective, we can also notice the direction of literature creation from cultural angle. Along with the social position of small cities and towns becomes increasingly important, making a thorough investigation and study of Chinese modern small cities and towns literary works is a very practical work.