The Maternal Writing Of Revolution Historical Novel In17Years

During the Seventeen-Year Period, and under such special cultural context, the revolutionary historical novel writers had devoted to their extraordinary explorations and experiments. On one hand, they tried to closely relate their creations to political discourse in order to conform to the era mainstream. On the other hand, unsatisfied with expression of single subject and theme, they also tried to find out the warm aspect in serious revolutionary discourse in order to return to human spiritual home built by maternity. Therefore, they got the excluded maternity disguised and adapted to make it legal to enter revolutionary texts, with the hope that they could fill the gap of the century’s lost tenderness with the help of unique softness in maternity. In revolutionary texts of this period, maternity not only bore personal love in the traditional moral sense, but also became politically under the disguise of great revolutionary discourse. Moreover, it became single and vague, and went against writers’original intention of writing it.The thesis consists of three parts. The first part does an analogy analysis about different maternal images in revolutionary historical novels during the Seventeen-Year Period. And it divides them into three categories, namely, the type of Mulan and irony lady which is the category that signifies revolution and maternity mutually reinforcing and neutralizing each other, the type of intellectual women and working women which is the category that signifies revolution and maternity mutually promoting, the type of mother-like or sister-like women which is the category that signifies revolution and maternity being in complete harmony. The second part explores the double strategies of maternity narrative from the perspective of revolution narrative and humanity narrative. The third part digs into some puzzles of maternity narrative, based on the analysis of the interaction between revolution and maternity and of the lack of the role of father in accordance with its metaphorical atmosphere. During the Seventeen-Year Period when political discourse won out individuality discourse, many writers were caught in the struggle of revolution narrative and maternity narrative. However, they experimented to avoid the true maternity being symbolized and the individuality discourse being drowned. Therefore, in the history of revolutionary historical novel, the theme of maternity still shone bright.