Jia Pingwa Novels Since The 90 S Of The Appeal To Modernity

Jia Pingwa is a writer with strong sense of social responsibility and sense of mission. His early writings have been concerned about the social changes of the time in China and celebrated social reforms, but since1990s, his novel creation began to reflect a different thought tendency. He admits the positive impacts of modernity on China and at the same time he finds that the accelerating modernization process has also caused the fall of the humanistic value and the loss of human spiritual home and thus he has started the long journey on modernity anxiety and reflection.In recent years, as modernity and aesthetic modernity have been the hot topics in literary field, this paper discusses the modernity anxiety and the persistent resistance and break-through of this anxiety in Jia Pingwa’s novels since1990s. This is the unique point different from the previous researches on Jia Pingwa.This thesis consists of five parts. The introduction part mainly defines briefly modernity and aesthetic modernity and outlines Jia Pingwa’s appeal for aesthetic modernity in his novels since1990s. Chapter One analyzes and interprets The Deserted City and other novels and finds that Jia’s anxiety is from the reality alienation and humanity alienation and that his life experiences, personality and changes in his life have deeply influenced his writing style evolution. Chapter Two analyzes Jia’s writing pattern in depicting modernity anxiety. One is the chaos and feeble struggle of country folks after coming into cities, which reflects the drift, rootlessness and spiritual variation of country folks. Another is intellectual’s helpless spiritual return. When the simple country home in their memory does not exist any more and the lost self and humanity they are trying to look for is of no trace, they sink into helplessness and lost again. Chapter Three analyzes that Jia Pingwa doesn’t lost in despair when he is puzzled by the modernity anxiety and actively seeks for the spiritual break-through. He finds metaphors for national hope in Chinese traditional culture and expresses his pray for a harmonious relationship between human and nature. At the same time, he is reconstructing the ideal personality in modern society and actively explores the modernity road suitable for China. The Conclusion part discusses that Jia Pingwa carries on and surpasses writers like Fei Ming and Shen Congwen in aesthetic modernity. In face of the conflict and contradiction between modern civilization and the traditional civilization during the current Chinese historical transition period, Jia Pingwa is anxious but sticks in the reconstruction of ideal spiritual home.As the thinking of the Chinese modernity cause is getting deeper and deeper, this thesis analyzes the modernity anxiety and break-through in Jia Pingwa’s novels since1990s, which explores Jia Pingwa’s complicated spiritual world from a new perspective, also accurately grasps Jia Pingwa’s literary spirit of focusing on reality and undoubtedly provides some references in literary sense for the modernization of China. This is where Jia Pingwa’s transcendence and value of his reflection on modernity lie.