Rural Writing Under The Modern Perspective

Chinese modern Local novels, with the founder of Lu Xun, imagined and constructed a backward and dilapidated local China as well as ignorant and slavish Chinese farmers, which is quite different from the idyllic pastoral in traditional Chinese literature. Undoubtedly, this kind of local experience plainly and truly reflects the changes of Chinese social reality of rural life, also clearly highlights the particular standpoint of this generation of writers and their modern demands.In a historical context mixed with East and West, tradition and modernity, the common experience of these writers, i.e. came from rural to urban, then went aboard and finally went back to hometown, deeply affects their new recognition of their hometown. Therefore they often focus on the hometown born the weight of the negative image of the traditional culture consciously or unconsciously. It’s thought-provoking while it also tends to blame inevitably.This paper takes Lu Xun’s local novels as example of case, combing the distinctive characteristics of the construction of its rural image and making textual criticisms and explanations of the formation and cause of his critical stance. At the same time, this paper tries to reveal the complexity of the critical stance in modern Chinese local novel writings by lateral contrasting with writers like Shen Congwen, Zhao Shuli and so on.This paper is mainly divided into three sections:the first chapter starts from the analysis of the characters and the social environment in Lu Xun’s local novels. In this chapter, it aims to reveal that the rural in Lu Xun’s local novels is a microcosm of feudal society by analysis of the two types of characters:strong ethical code defenders and weak ethical code defenders.The second chapter studies from the social environment and personal experience of Lu Xun and makes textual criticisms and explanations of the formation and cause of his critical stance.The third chapter makes a contrast of the local novels of Lu Xun and Shen Congwen as well as that of Zhao Shuli. It not only points out the commonality of Chinese modern local writing but also makes efforts to reveal their differences. Lu Xun’s critical and exposing attitude in local novels shares the same purpose with elegiac writing in Shen Congwen’s local novels. They two are discontent with the rural status quo of the old china and search for an ideal future society. However, Zhao Shuli’s local novels are written after the "revolution", his pursuit of a new broad road to future constitutes the inheritance and supplement of Lu Xun’s local novels to a certain extent.