Liberated Areas Popular Novels

On the track of the evolvement of popular novels, the popular novels of the liberated area have its own peculiar artistic characteristics due to the special time and cultural environment. This kind of literary works was born in the period of revolution and war, taking those legendary figures and stories as subject matters, adopting the traditional literary forms and developing on this basis, and serving for special political purposes. This thesis decodes the popular novels of the liberated area from the three aspects of content, form and function of such novels, discussing the means of its change for modern times on the basis of its inheriting the characteristics of traditional novels.This thesis consists of five parts, divided into three chapters and ten small sections. The main content in each part is as follows:The introduction part presents the process of the study on the popular novels of the liberated area. The study began with the birth of such novels, experiencing two stages with a division line of the year of 1980. In the two stages, the researchers show different characteristics in the academic background they depended on, the academic scope they had and the methods they adopted. Their inspiring views and the limitations of their study provide the feasibility of writing this thesis.The first chapter includes two sections, first defining and comparing the concept of the popular novels of the liberated area, and then examining the general condition of the creation and the historical and cultural background of this kind of novels. This chapter gives a solid foundation for further study in this thesis.Chapter Two is composed of three sections, examining the content of popular novels of the liberated area from the three fields of the evolvement of the revolutionary war, the legend of chivalrous heroes and the rising of "revolution plus love". This chapter points out that this kind of novels inherits the theme of historical evolvement, chivalrous theme and the theme of heroes and beauties in traditional popular novels; and also indicates that the novels show a clear characteristics of the times as it closely combines the situation of war in that period.Chapter Three has two sections, examining the forms adopted by the popular novelsof the liberated area, and claiming that most writers adopt the "story-form" and "chapter-form" commonly used in traditional popular novels. They pay much attention to catering for the tastes of the populace, inherit the old forms and meanwhile have some creation.Chapter Four includes three sections, examining the political utilitarianism of such kind of novels from the propagandizing awareness, problem awareness and the awareness of publishing the evil and popularizing the good referring to the writers' motives in writing and the practical effect of the works.The part of conclusion summarizes the former content, pointing out the intermediate nature of such novels as well as analyzing its deep influence. As a kind of literary mode supported by the ideology, the popular novels of the liberated area have direct influence on those novels with revolutionary themes after the founding of the People's Republic of China from the preference of content, the design of structure and the style of aesthetics and other aspects.