Research On Witchcraft Culture And The Creation Of Jia Pingwa’s Novels

Jia Pingwa has never stopped showing his vigorous creativity in writing since hepublished his first collection of short stories Children Soldiers in1997and Firefly in2013. He is exceptional in the literal world for his high productivity. He has written morethan7million words in his works, including poems, novels, essays and his literaryreviews. He has about300thousand to400thousand readers with over100bookspublished in mainland China and overseas countries. The Chinese contemporaryliterature has seen many trends of thoughts and Jia Pingwa always maintains his uniquepoint of view. Good or bad, Jia Pingwa is a writer with the most controversies. Hisplentiful works are also varied in styles, which makes the critics feel difficult tounderstand his works.This paper, from the point of view of literal culturology, with the help of theresearch results in Folklore, Science of Religion, psychology and History, analyzes therelationship between witchcraft culture and the creation of Jia Pingwa’s novel. Witchcraft,as part of social phenomenon, is a product of feudal culture and essentially a kind ofpseudoscience. Witchcraft has nothing valuable but psychological hint. However, inwriting, Jia Pingwa regards witchcraft as an attitude towards life, as criticism for thepursuit of privilege, as concern for the fate of women. Therefore, I take a strict resistancetowards witchcraft in daily life and maintain a serious attitude towards witchcraft inliterature writing.Chapter one, the “witchcraft logic and interpreting mechanism”, mainly explains thebasic principle and conception of witchcraft. This part explains the basic conditions forthe appearance of witchcraft. I extracted “homoeopathic magic” and “contagious magic”on the basis of Principle of Similarity and Principle of imitation and also introduced theconception of “antipathetic magic”. We can find in his novels that Jia Pingwa hasmulti-voice interpreting mechanism for mysterious things. His views are mostly partial tomagic mysticism. The topics on magic mysticism have many supporters and enjoy muchfreedom for interpreting. The scientific and rational talks are restrained by magicdiscourse.Chapter two, the source of Jia’s witchcraft, mainly explores the source of the Jia’s witchcraft. The witchcraft in Jia Pingwa’s novels has its own source. The magic culturehighlights ghosts and immortals, which contributed to Jia’s ways of thinking. The roughexperience in his life makes Jia’s novels full of mysterious personalities. Jia’spurposefully reference of mythical stories helps Jia show his thoughts specifically aboutmagic in his novels.Chapter three, the interpretation of witchcraft culture, mainly talks about the culturalconnotation of magic matters in the Jia Pingwa’s novels. Life Extension shows theattitude towards the essence of life. Handiwork is the outcome of people crazilyworshiping privilege. Love and marriage is the strong expression of male discourse,which weakens the voice of independent women.Chapter four,“the aesthetic evaluation of magic discourse”, mainly discusses themeaning and value of magic discourse in the figure of speech in novel writing. Magicdiscourse, as an aesthetic object, makes great contribution to the novel writing. In Jia’snovels, witchcraft time goes back to cycle time as in the classic literature and witchcraftmatters makes up the clue, witchcraft thinking in the novels makes the poetic pursuitpossible.Chapter five, restructuring the spiritual home, mainly talks about the value of JiaPingwa’s magic discourse. Witchcraft becomes the unique discourse for Jia Pingwa. Inmodern literature, witchcraft estranges formal discourse with informal discourse. In thedomain of world literature, witchcraft uses national traditional culture to deal withpost-colonialist culture. In the materialized, socialized and market influenced literalcondition, Jia tries to make a mysterious cultural atmosphere by witchcraft discourse inorder to rebuild the spiritual home.Different from other modern writers, the study of Jia Pingwa has almost become anindependent branch. In the field of literary criticism, the opinions vary. This paper, fromthe perspective of magic culture, put the study of Jia Pingwa on a broader new world.There will be inadequacy if we try to rebuild the spiritual home in the name of magic.However, witchcraft does do good to the humanistic spirit in the society. In the socialistharmonious society construction, spiritual civilization holds the same importance as thematerial civilization. This paper tries to provide a cultural model for the socialist spiritualcivilization construction.