"Moon" In Zhangai-ling’s Novels

Since ’4th May’ event and the linguistic revolution that is caused by, Modern Chinese has taken the roleof the main literature language of classical Chinese. Chinese literature language steps into modernismfrom classical. Modern Chinese rebuild its structure by absorbing western grammar and vocabulary. Itchanged into a “wild horse” that is difficult to be ride by many writers. Chinese literature languagehadn’t reached to a mature situation for a long time.Zhang Ai-ling, as a fantastic writer who has been built her reputation since1940s, became famous inmodern Chinese literature. Her novels sweep China in the twenty-first century with a type of literaturelanguage which is a mixture of classical and modern, simple and elegant. In fact, she provides a perfectexample of a balance mixture of Chinese by her pieces of work.“Moon” is the most classic icon ofZhang’s novels. In this article, I am going to focus on “Moon” in her works, to explain how she helpedto promote the Europeanization of Chinese from classical to modern, and even to a relatively maturesituation.In chapter1,I will focus on two important debates of the evolutionary road of Modern Chinese,“thedebate of ancient and modern Chinese” and debates about the “Europeanization” of Chinese. Whyshould the classical Chinese language replaced by vernacular Chinese? First, I’ll explain this question.Then I’m going to show some imperfect literature language examples of modern writers, in order todiscuss the limitation of “Europeanization” and the culture clashes during the reforming of Chineseliterary language. These will explain why scholars raged a controversy over the “Europeanization” ofChinese and help to clarify what is the mature example of the language of modern Chinese literature.Chapter2,I’ll focus on the literature language of Zhang Ai-ling’s novels and describes how classicalChinese Literature had deep influence on it. First, focus around the ‘Moon’ in her works, we proceed toexplore the influences of poetic images, classical connotation and elegant literature languages whichcame from ancient Chinese poems and lyrics. Secondly, I’ll research the standpoint of common people,folk adage, figure images and environmental description in Zhang’s novels which were inherited from classical fictions like Chin Ping Mei and A Dream of Red Mansions.I’ll concentrate on the incorporation of European influences and cultural consciousness of Zhang’sliterature language. The first part describes how Zhang’s “Moon” endeavor to interconnect theEuropeanized language and conventional Chinese usages to conceive a more mature literary language.The second part discusses how western “Moon” enriched the image of moon in modern Chineseliterature. While the moon in modern novels is always changing when people get older. This moon has abig different from the immutable moon in ancient Chinese poems and lyrics, I’ll talking about it andexplain it with the different thinking mode and space-time consciousness between Chinese andWesterners.