A Study Of Back To 1942 From The Perspective Of New Historicism

The investigative novel Back to 1942 is a masterpiece of contemporary Chinese literature, and it is also regarded as the first new-historisim novel by its writer Liu Zhenyun among all his works. Back to 1942 tells a story of 3 thousands of Henan people experiencing and escaping from starvation in 1942. It restores the real but forgotten history exactly.The new historicism rose in the early 1980 s, popular in the America and Britain. Literary criticism of new historical school, firmly believing in the main principles-“historical text” and “textual history”,denies the so-called “outlook” and “background” of history and literature, in other words, they insist on that literature and history are not only of equal importance, but also together integrated seamlessly, and interact with each other.The rise of new historicism, to a certain extent, also reflects the profound reflection on previous formalism criticism of western literary theories, accordingly, some scholars also began to explore the relationship between literature and history. Investigative novel Back to 1942 is an accepted representative of the new historicism novels which embodies the spirit of new historicism. And the attitude of Liu Zhenyun toward history and literature in Back to 1942 caters to the point of view of new historic-ism.In the fiction, literature fiction and historical truth can be inevitably coexisted; the official recorded history of 1942 is cleared up and fragmented by the writer.Therefore, based on the theory of new historisim, the paper aims to analyze the fiction Back to 1942 in detail in several methods like close reading, theory and case analysis from the following several parts.In the first chapter, there is a concise introduction about Liu Zhenyun, from specific aspects such as his life experience and writing career, as well as his novel Back to 1942 and the film adaptation 1942. In the second chapter, the paper detailedly present some current situations of domestic research in this field, summarizing the achievements of predecessors and the gaps they have not filled so far. In chapter 3, the paper makes an intensive reading on the characteristics of the film adaptation-1942 under the guides of main theories of new historicism, for instance, the two core principles-“ history textual” and “historical text”. Briefly speaking, the whole part is written in accordance with the structure-“theory-text analysis”. In the fourth chapter, the paper further interpret the full version Back to 1942, through the analysis of the creative features of the film 1942 based on the theories of new historicism. The final chapter, which is also the epilogue of the paper, reviews the novel Back to 1942 and the film adaptation 1942 as a whole and end up with a conclusion that both the novel and the film adaptation are combination of history and text. The paper deems that Liu Zhenyun always upholds the attitude of historicism and is devoted to breaking the boundary between history and text. As a result, his reflection and reconstruction toward the official history clearly appears in his novels especially in 1942 which is full of realistic meaning.