The "Textual Rebirth"in Literary Works Of Muxin

The "Textual Rebirth" in this paper is a phenomenon that the author refers to the textual works of others (Source Text) as raw material, and rewrites them slightly, to form his own works (Rebirth Text). There is a obvious and direct connection between the Source Text and the Rebirth Text, which can’t be denied.The "Textual Rebirth" is an important writing method of Muxin, and one of the main features of his works as well.The amount of Muxin’s Rebirth Texts is quite impressive. Among them, poetries take up a large proportion while essays and short novels are limited. Nevertheless, there are also some cases of the latter.The Source Texts of Muxin derive from a wealth of sources, including literary works in both China and abroad from the ancient times to present, non-literary works such as press reports and popular science books. Two kinds of sources deserve special attention. They are the works of Zhou Zuoren and some western literary works.There is no statement or clue of Textual Rebirth in most of Muxin’s Rebirth Texts. A few Rebirth Texts have some statements or clues, but the hints vary in degree. Some hints are obvious and complete, while some are obscure or incomplete. Some Rebirth Texts not only have no hint, but also have some misleadings which make readers believe it is original.This paper will analyze the strategies of Muxin’s Textual Rebirth through four mam points:On the content, Muxin often adopted strategies such as "Assorted Dishes" and "Opposite Opinion", to integrate and process the Source Texts. There is an obvious tendency that how Muxin drew the materials from the Source Texts. His favourite content of Source Texts are:love, diet, scenery and interesting news. Which he is inclined to cut severely include plots, dialogues and the author’s opinion. These clearly reflect Muxin’s thoughts and interests. His motivation includes influence of outlook on Quwei in Jiangnan culture, aestheticism and disgust at vulgarity, impressionism and hedonism.On narrative person, Muxin favored the first person. For Textual Rebirth, he usually made the third person into the first person, and the other way round is rare. Not only so, the "I" in his Rebirth Texts always have a stronger presence and absolute advantage. It is closely related to the idea of "avatar and second life" in his own words, which reflects his narcissism. There are three expressions and reasons to his narcissism:individualism, confidence in his cognitive ability and aristocrat complex. On the literary style, owing to the consciousness of literary style, Muxin deliberately pursued the diversity of style. In many of his works, exploration and experiment of literary form are not hard to find. Some of his Rebirth Texts showed little change in the content, but changed much in the style. Besides that, most of his Rebirth Texts are short and small. Compared with the Source Texts, they clearly were reduced in length. One of the features of Muxin’s works is being short. There are some possible reasons for this:"Jotted Writing", Non-System Conception, miniature art and big expectations to the readers.On the wording, Muxin attached great importance to the sense of wording. The excellent skills to control language appear in many of his works. The main performances include polishing up the text, refining the sentences, modelling after an antique and westernization, rewriting for Quwei, prudence in rhetoric.The final conclusion chapter narrates the brief history of "Textual Rebirth", and compares it with some related concepts, such as intertextuality and rewriting.Muxin defended himself for the reasonability of his Textual Rebirth. This paper analyzes the reasons why he was especially keen to Textual Rebirth:the anxiety of influence, the worship of western culture, the anxiety of cultural identity which came from his emigration, the recession of originality and the pressure from reputation.The literary function of Muxin’s Textual Rebirth includes filling of significance, the effect of fragmentation, the aestheticization of everyday life, etc.Lastly, there are some examples of Muxin’s unsuccessful Textual Rebirth and the analysis.