Study On The "storytellers" In Mo Yan’s Novels

Grew up with the folk culture and immersed in conventional life for a long time,Mo Yan has been familiar with the art of storytelling and classic Chinese novels,which comes into being the deep-layered spirit of his novels.By close reading,this paper focuses on discussing how the Chinese ancient storyteller tradition produced a profound influence on Mo Yan’s writing,including the standpoint of the author,the attribute of the contents and the speech style of the narrator.Positioned himself as a storyteller,Mo Yan proposed“Writing like the Civilians”,so that he could derive abundant materials of great vitality from common people. The concept of animism and magic images in his works are rooted in Chinese folk tales and these“odd, puissance, turmoil and deity” in Chinese narrative literature, a collection of bizarre stories by Pu Song Ling of the Qing Dynasty for instance. Following the example of the storytellers,the narrator represents stories at his own will,such as doing comment on characters, putting some gossips in, describing things at great length. Under these circumstances,Mo Yan’s novels developed the spirits of “Xiao Shuo”,which means more than Chinese novels.In this sense,Mo Yan gave full scope to narration and refreshed the deep spirit of storyteller tradition.As a storyteller,Mo Yan inherits this outstanding and distinctive tradition creatively by demonstrating the process of storytelling, highlighting the people who listen to the stories,and putting the way of covered places for storytelling into use. The techniques of storytelling become more important in a “tell-listen” framework.As a result,Mo Yan transcended his hometown,history,reality, and realized self-fulfillment by individual writing.He has reconnected the contemporary fiction with Chinese narrative traditions,which attached a new meaning to the ancient Chinese storyteller tradition.