Modern Diary Novel Study

Chinese modern diary novel rises in the last Qing dynasty and flourishes from the May 4^th Movement of 1919. Because of its abundant content, insightful mind and particular stylist, some classic texts of the Chinese modern diary novel take important position in the history of Chinese modern literature. The diary novel in the early of the Republic of China paved the way for the development of Chinese modern diary novel. From the year of 1917, the diary novel makes a breakthrough in its style and begins its modern way, which mainly concerns the theme of love and marriages and can reveal the social problems. Then, in the last 1930s, Chinese modern diary novels are characterized by the plentiful forms and multi styles, shifting the theme of the "minimal self to exhibit the whole society. However, with the development of the society and fictional stylist, such kind of diary novel is on the way of declining because it can not meet the needs of the literary principles.The process of writing and reading is in the sequence of time. As one type of narratology, the novel has to deal with two types of time, the story time and the narrative time, the difference of which leads to the flexibility in constructing the texts. So the narrative time is often taken as an important method to create the diary novels. In narratology, the relationship between the narrator and the story is called the narrative situation, which is also considered to be the most basic one and is significant to study the narrative features. Generally, the narrative situation includes narrative method, narrative person and narrative focusing. The combination of these factors decides the relationship between the narrator and the story, and forms different kinds of narrative situation.As a kind of important literary forms in the history of Chinese modern literature, Chinese modern diary novel relies on its authenticity by reflecting the reality. The diary novel, which reflects the true feeling of the author, entrusts itself the particular aesthetics, enriches the literary fields and improves the creative command to the author. Meanwhile, the authenticity of the diary novel is significant to attract the readers. However, when depicting the life and creating the texts, the author may engraft his own feelings to reconstruct his own image or write for his purpose, which is different from the real life. In other words, such kind of social reality rewritten by the author means the non-authenticity of the texts. Usually, the diary novel is the author's. active creation to the real life, so it involves the authenticity of the real life and the non-authenticity of the artistic fabrication. The contradiction between authenticity and non-authenticity comes from the writing principles and the literary characteristics. Therefore, the author has to solve the creative contradiction.At the end, I intend to point out that a further research is needed to study the diary novel. Because the stylistic features of diary novel has a close relationship with the change of Chinese modern culture, the rising and declining of diary novel reflect the pessimistic fate of the individualism in the Chinese modern literature. So it is significant to do a systematic study on the development of the diary novel and explore the insightful thought of it. In fact, such study can broaden the research field of Chinese modern novel and deepen the understanding on the stylist of Chinese modern novel.