The Civil Consciousness Of Lao She's Novels

Mr. Lao She, a "People's Artist", has a special place in contemporary Chinese literature. By adopting a civil perspective and drawing life experiences of his own, he drew pictures one after another of the hard lives of the urban middle and lower classes, anatomized the intricate innermost feelings of the common city dwellers, and expressed, at the same time, his profound sympathy to his characters.This study of the textual features of Lao She's novels aims to probe into the compelling civilian consciousness in the novels, and to achieve a multi-perspective and more insightful understanding of Lao She's mentality and literary creation. The bibliographic approach, which is appropriate for theoretical studies, is applied in this study to analyze the techniques used in the novels in order to specify Lao She's civil consciousness, the connotations of which is, therefore, naturally the focus of attention.The civil consciousness in Lao She's novels is typically represented in three aspects: the choice of themes, the writer's sympathetic sentiment, and the nationalized and popularized narrative styles. In his creation, Lao She constructed a tragic artistic world of the everyman in such themes as prostitutes, ricksha pullers, policemen, and petty intellectuals, which revealed not only the psychic sufferings of the characters but also the weaknesses of human nature as exhibited by them. Emotionally, he expressed not only sympathy to but also criticism of his characters. Formally, he creatively developed the narrative style of folklores by fashioning the popular "Beijing-flavored" artistic style, which is humorous and familiar with simple vernacular language.Among the diverse sources from which Lao She's civil consciousness stems, the most crucial ones are his specific personal experience as a pauper in the fin-de-sciecle, the influence of the May Fourth Movement, and his intense religious complex.The study of civil consciousness in Lao She's novels is of great...