Image Study Of Christian Chinese Modern Fiction

From the May4th era when China new literature came into being, to the "Revolutionary-literature" in the30s, and to the period of Anti-Japanese War, many kinds of Christian figures sprung up in Chinese novels. The Christian figures of different character and personality are important part of China modern literature. This paper attempts to examine the general quality of Christian portrayal in Chinese modern novels, and to discover the unique artistic charm and value of Christian image in literary history.Christian image is mainly analyzed from three aspects:Firstly, use the "focal awareness" and "subsidiary awareness" theory of a British scholar named Poland to analyze the characters’ spiritual world, which can be compared with Christian own ethical values to assess the validity of Christian image; Secondly, use Chatman, Ewan’s "feature" theory to inspect the fullness of the Christian image and the depth of human nature; Thirdly, combining with the different time background and the writer’s ideology, the root cause of the characters’formation in the novel can be explained.According to the different appearance of Christian characters in different historic periods, this paper divides to three chapters:Chapter one:"Christian portrayal of the novel in the May4th era". In Bingxin’s Problem-novel, Christians appear as love or redeemer of sacrifice; In Xu Dishan, a religious scholar’s novel, Christians became the personification of the patience and forgiveness; In sentimental novelist Lu Yin and Yu Dafu’s novels, the protagonists who are in mental or physical illness often meet missionaries comforting them or praying aside. In addition to those characters like a symbol of certain kind of concept, we should pay attention to two autobiographical novels, named "leaves" by Guo Moruo and "Thorn Heart" by Su Xuelin. In the two works, relatively full and true Christian characters appears, which also have considerable psychological depth.Chapter two:"Christian image in20s and30s object-Christ novels". In the30s, ob-Christianity’s novels sprung up. Both its quantity and quality exceed the works in the20s. The characters in the novel are also very different from20s, which are two extremes. Most of the Christian figures in the20s intends to beautified, and most of the Christians in30s are self-serving hypocrisy, and beast-like. Missionaries turn out to be brutal cultural invaders. This phenomenon is related to rising nationalist sentiment at that time. and the authors’ internal experience of the falsity of Christian. Xiao Qian and Zhang Ziping are representatives who launched violent attack on Christian, and their work are the focus of this chapter.Chapter three,"Christians portrayal of the novel in30s and40s". In this period, there appear Christian characters created in authors’ calm observation, which reproduce the contradictions and conflicts in the soul of the Christians. These works neither positively praise nor extremely criticize the Christions. Bing Xin’s "Photos" describes a missionary woman who devote her whole life to Chinese people, while silently sighs for her lost youth; She takes good care of her adopted daughter Shuzhen, and also she want to selfishly possess of her. In Xu Dishan’s novel "Yuguan," a Chinese woman Yuguan is a widow, who has to make a living by doing missionary. Though she is quite enthusiastic in her missionary work, the ancestor worship habitude can never be abolished; Bajin’s’ Tian Huishi" shows a model Christian Tian Huishi behaving actively in Anti-Japanese War. He believe in God’s love in the beginning, and after a series of strikes on his business and the death of his son, he died in agony and despair eventually.Christian figures in China’s modern novels are essentially the Christian image in the eyes of Chinese intellectuals, and the Christian figures in the novels are destined to be permeated by Chinese author’s ideals and hopes. In the historic context of culture conversation and entanglement between Chinese and western countries, perspective of Christians and Christianity from Chinese authors is hard to avoid distortion or incorrection. However, there are still many Christians figures of rich humanity appeared in the novels, which are quite valuable.