A Review Of Xiao Hong’s Biography Research

In the history of modern Chinese literature studies, Xiao Hong can be regarded as one of theclassic writers. In the70years from1940s to the new century, more than60varieties of XiaoHong’s biographies have been produced, and Xiao Hong’s image has been shaped from multipleaspects, which is so prominent compared with the other writers.Some of the researches on Xiao Hong’s biography have focused on Xiao Hong’s images inbiography literature, and the others focused on the reconstruction of Xiao Hong’s image since theNew Age. Based on these researches, the space of Xiao Hong’s biography research has yet to beexpanded. Generally speaking, biographical research includes three aspects, biographical criticism,the history of biography and the poetics of biography. Specifically to the studies of Xiao Hong’sbiography, it can be found that Xiao Hong’s biography writing has made great achievements, butthe researches on Xiao Hong’s biography are deficient. Basically, this phenomenon is closelyrelated with the weakness of the biographical criticism and the theory of the modern Chinesebiography literature. When Xiao Hong’s biography writing and publications have alreadyaccumulated a certain scale, it’s necessary to sort out, evaluate and considerate about thesebiographies.The paper is consisted of3units. The first unit is a review of the writing and publications ofXiao Hong’s biography. Then, according to the typology of the biography, Xiao Hong’sbiographies have been classified as feminist biography, biography of writers, biographical fiction,pictorial biography and biopics about Xiao Hong and so on. So many types of Xiao Hong’sbiographies have been studied to keep track of the current situation, and to discuss the features andfunctions of different types of biography, as well as the experiments and developments, forexample, images has became a new media for biography. Based on the typology researches ofXiao Hong’s biography, the second unit of the paper is mainly about the text analysis andcommentary on some classic cases. The unit not only concludes the introduction of the situation ofXiao Hong’s biography publications, but also involves the discussion and analysis on the typicaltext of Xiao Hong’s biographies. In the way of biographical criticism, historic and literary factor,history of individual, the representation of personality, and the interpretation of biographical subject have been concerned about; The four cases listed focus on the discussions based on thehistorical background impact of the biography writing, the scholarly factor of the biography ofwriters that have influenced the research, the dialogue between the biography writers and thebiographical subject and the materials quoted of the great biography. The third unit begins with abrief profile of Xiao Hong’s biographical criticism, which also can be seen as a review of thehistory of criticism. Based on the typology of studies and analysis of cases above, several topicsare mentioned in Xiao Hong’s biography writing, such as the biographical unity–the deficiencyof interpretation on Xiao Hong’s childhood; the selection and use of biographical material–overquote a number of biographical material, as well as a opinion that biography should not just be aannalistic style, but develop to the modern biography which has the features such as interpret thebiographical subject. Finally, the paper provides a brief discussion of interactivities between thebiography of writers and the history of literary; the other point is that the overlap and conflict areexpounded between the image of Xiao Hong in literary history and Xiao Hong’s biographyhistory.To establish a theory of biography which is integrated and profound, it is necessary tosummarize the history of biography, and take into account the biographical criticism as the sectionand element of the biography history. This paper have reviewed the history of Xiao Hong’sbiography writing, and made comments on the typical Xiao Hong’s biography text selectively,summed up the deficiency of Xiao Hong’s biography writing from the point of biographicalcriticism and tried to explore the new topic and academic point of Xiao Hong’s biographicalresearch, which will not only promote the research of Xiao Hong, but also benefit the studiesabout other modern Chinese writers and their biography writing, even the constructions of thewhole theory of biography.