The Rites Of Initiation On Cao Wenxuan's Full-length Novels

Cao WenXuan is undoubtedly a prominent writer in Chinese modern Children literature. Since 1990s, he has created a large number of novels, which are so influential in the modern history of Chinese children's literature.On the basis of approving of Cao's view and taking his full-length novels as a subject, this paper, from the perspective of Archetypal Criticism , is an attempt to discuss its cultural and aesthetic connotations. It further summarizes its special value in modern history of children literature.Almost each of his novels adopts a similar narrative style: young heroes become grown-up after experiencing spiritual sufferings. Those similar stories of becoming mature just embody the characteristics of novels of initiation. Cao's novels are typical of vividly ceremonial features, which are the prototype of initiation ceremonies.It has a long history for the relationship between rite and literature though they belong to different literary fields and both reflect the old ceremonyial prototype . It is assumed that it is the same with Cao's novels . They reflect those influential initiation ceremonies in early human lives directly or indirectly. In his novels, the background, the way of narration, growing experience of heroes and the repetition of suffering theme all have vivid ceremonial characteristics.Part One summarizes them as being holy, symbolized, procedural and prototypic. They are typical of rites of initiation.Part Two analyzes the two ways of presenting the initiation ceremonial prototype from specific novels. One is the hero-being prototype, the other is the common adult-becoming prototype. To the young individual, the later way is much more widespread.Part Three discusses the impact of rites of initiation on Cao's novels.on one hand, it helps to strengthen the cultural connotation of those novels. While innated into a writer's aesthetic pursing and writing mode,it is inclined to lead to the self-repetition of his writing.when Cao tries to adopt ignition rites into his works through conjecture,transformation and artilization, he has been to eager to enhance the ceremorial atmosphere in his novels,thus makes the story logic apart from its narration and perspective.