On The Modernity Of Baoshi’s Novels

Based on the description of country-side narration, the novels of Baoshi mainly show the good characters like kindness, modesty, innocence and so on in the villagers. The portrayal of the countries reveals vividly the author’s sentimental attachment to the fading village life. This thesis tries to discuss Baoshi’s novels through the angel of modernity, especially the aesthetic modernity.Analyzing from the point of historical culture, Xiang Tu Literature is the production of the New Culture Movement and the Xiang Tu novels in the 20 th century are full of the features of modernity by advocating democracy, technology and rationality. Among those novels, some represent the aesthetic modernity of country-side life narration as in the works of Shen Congwen. Being an important part of modernity, the aesthetic modernity is a kind of introspection of Modernity and forms the inherent tension together with enlightening modernity. The aesthetic modernity criticizes mainly the side effects caused by modernity like the distortion of human nature and the alienation of people’s life which show the aspect of anti-modernity.The aesthetic modernity in Baoshi’s novels is shown not only in his compliment for the single life, free love, the beauty of humanity and the beauty of human feelings, but also in his writing techniques which reveals the inborn aesthetic modernity in his novels. In addition, the novels of Baoshi tend to combine the urban narration with the country-side narration to reveal people’s contradictory psychology in which people miss the life in the country-side, yet long for the life of big cities in the meantime. By the describing of this mental state, the author represents fully his concern for the modern people’s struggle in their spiritual predicament.