The Study Of "Guider" Image In Chinese’Seventeen-year’ Novels

Impacted by the context and aesthetic notions in the specific time, the Chinese’ seventeen-year’novels represent a fantastic historical landscape, which includes a rather fixed plots, narrative mode, relationship between the characters and narrative function. In this study, based on the theories of structuralism narratology, I will consider the typical’ seventeen-year’revolutionary historical novels, which mainly include so-called "three hong (red) and one chuang; qing, shan and bao as well as lin", as the texts to analyze their narrative codes and also draw on the methodology in previous research of novels of formation and education. After that, I come up with the groundbreaking research topic: the image of the "guider", mapping the development of the characters as so-called "Guider" in the novels from historical perspective, and examining the construction of the specific narrative mode--"lead-one-way narration" in the level of rhetorical poetics. The image of "Guider" could be sorted by different phases of growth such as the torchbearer, the illuminati and the leader. I also argue that the main narrative function of "Guider" is "leading the way" and "mobilizing". The "Leading-the-way" function of "the guider" and the "growing-up" function of "the guided" constitute a symmetrical structure including the connotation of the "activeness" and "passivity", which have an effect of interaction and dialogue between characters through the different rhythms in the space of the grand narration of the saga novels and attain the objectives of "propagandizing" and "inculcating" in the discourse of the mainstream ideology under the communistic "discipline". Based on the analysis of the texts, I also find that the image of the "Guider" can be divided into three categories:the "stretch-style" guider as "hero", the "sense-style" guider as "tutor" and the "summary-style" guider as "everyman" in terms of the "reception effect" of the novels. Combined with the specific political requirement of "oneness" for Chinese literature, on one hand the image of the "Guider" hit the mark to soften the expression of ideology and form the response-inviting structure of revolutionary fervor, on the other hand it descends to the vision of rhetoric and the symbol of ideology in the context.