An Analysis Of The Relationship Between The Wunuo Culture In West Hunan And Shen Congwen’s Cultural Consciousness

In the history of modern Chinese literature, Shen Congwen is an important writer who wrote mainly on the regional culture of West Hunan. In the days of Shen, there was a widely prevailed belief in the witch and ghosts in West Hunan.People there worshiped a variety of natural or man-made idols, wishing a high yield on their field and a good luck in their daily life. It is the so called Witch Culture, while in Chinese it is named the WuNuo Culture,which is a primitive religious belief existing as a spiritual essence of the regional culture of West Hunan. As a regional writer, Shen Congwen described much about WuNuo Culture in his literary works. As while, with a artistic vision, he has taken the WuNuo Culture in West Hunan as a kind of folk art of solemnity,savagery and mystery.While the WuNuo Culture in West Hunan has taken a particular part in Shen’s cultural construction, it also played a role of reference substance for Shen Congwen to evaluate some other cultures.Firstly, the WuNuo Culture contributed to the formation of Shen Congwen’s Consciousness of Pre-civilization. Shen considered that the WuNuo Culture is an inheritance of the primitive culture of the Chu Area in ancient China, according to which he intended to criticize the traditional Confucian culture of its Ethics. Meanwhile, the humanity highly praised in Shen’s works contains two elements, which are the morality in the Confucianism and the natural instincts in the Taoism. This kind of Humanity lived on a circumstance of WuNuo Culture in West Hunan. Rightly Upon this primitive religious circumstance, there was a transcendental agreement on the value of Humanity between Shen Congwen and these two Chinese traditional cultures, Confucianism and Taoism.Secondly, the WuNuo Culture effected the formation of Shen Congwen’s humanistic vision on religions. Buddhism and Christianity are two religious elements in Shen’s cultural system. Referring to the WuNuo Culture in West Hunan, Shen took a humanistic but rational vision to evaluate other religions, and therefore arrived a individual writing on religions in the history of modern Chinese literature.The third, the WuNuo Culture also contributed to Shen Congwen’s acknowledgement of god’s being, in which Shen has never admitted any belief on any kind of religions, but he showed an obvious Pantheism Thought and a deep admiration on religious emotion. Based on this kind of thoughts, Shen set up his proposition on the revival of the society. He thought that a religious consciousness would awake the social responsibility, while he didn’t mean to establish a real religion in the society.In this thesis, we attempt to provide a point of view that the WuNuo Culture in West Hunan has taken a core part in Shen Congwen’s cultural Construction.