Traditional And New Variations: The Late Qing Fiction Study Renovation

Refurbished novels are an important novel type between late Qing Dynasty and early Republicanera, which, as classic works, were rewritten by late-Qing novelists with modern concept. By using absurdrealistic writing style, such kind of novels reproduced the transformation process of modern China underthe strike of western civilization. However, the cultural thoughts with great time values embodied in suchnovels were neglected for a long time because of their relatively low literature artistry. Therefore, this papertries to give an analysis of such novels under the particular historical and cultural context of late QingDynasty so as to highlight their value and significance.Refurbished novels of late Qing Dynasty are a stream of creation thoughts, formed by the impactof the revolution in the novel field and the movement of New Novel, and they also bear the New Novelmovement’sidea of rebuilding the society and inspiring the civilians, so these classic novels weresubversively rewritten in theme, narrative language, artistic style, etc. With the spirit of realistic criticism,the author uses these novels to disclose and criticize the late-Qing society, as well as to explore and forecastthe future of China, which is the demand of the development of times, a manifestation of improving thesociety purpose, and also a natural expression of the strong national responsibility of the advancedintellectuals in late Qing Dynasty.Refurbished novels not only highlight the changes of society, but also detail the changes ofpeople’s daily life and mental thoughts under the background of the sharp collision of western and easterncultures, by which the author aims to show the changes of people’s daily life and nationalpsychology under the impact of time environment, the contradiction of being innovative or beingconservative hidden behind the refurbished novelists impacted by the style-using concept, and theunderlying reasons for these works’ wandering between tradition and modernity. On one hand, refurbishednovels criticize tradition, while on the other hand they show respect to tradition, the contradiction andstruggle of which is also reflected in the artistic aspect. The successful use of ultra-spatio-temporalnarrative, defamiliarization irony and flashback writing style is the novelists’ bold attempt to break throughthe tradition, but they make an utmost effort to imitate the tradition in aspects such as structure, layout and character images, which leads these novelists finally to fall into the traditionalstereotype. By analyzing the above content, the author summarizes his unique understanding of refurbishednovels, sorts out the deep impact of refurbished novels on various art forms such as time-travel novels andplays, and then makes a scientific and impartial evaluation on refurbished novels’ historical, cultural andliterary values.