On Shen Congwen Civil Awareness

Shen Congwen's deep folk experience and cultivation provided him with riches for his writing. Shen's novles are infiltrated with folk conception and thus have a unique feature of folk consciousness. This article studies Shen's novel using the Folk Theory proposed by Chen Sihe. The author will conduct a comprehensive examination of the text in the light of theory to discover various forms of folk consciousness beneath. The first part of the article discuss the reasons why Shen Congwen's novels formed a folk character from the subjective and objective aspects: First, the vagrant life of writer contributed to the writing; Second, influenced by many writers at that time, Shen Congwen made his own independent choice. In order to make a comprehensive discussion about the folk consciousness expressed in Shen Congwen's novels, this article focus on analyzing the specific expression in the content as well as manifestation of Shen Congwen'novels. The folk complex in Shen's work mainly lies in three aspects: First, writing by a countryman; Second, aesthetic identity of the folk value; Third,"Border Town"-the sadness of civil ideal. The ways how Shen integrated folk features in his novel can also be summarized in three aspects: First, the impact of folk literature on Shen's narrative technique; Second, the type and legendary of his characters; Third, the folk feature in the language of his novels. It is Shen Congwen's own experience and the cultivation of art that make him one unique writer in the modern literature.