The "village" Imagery Of Henan Novels Since The 1990s

Village is one of important communities. It is not only a cultural carrier of native China, but also an important image of literary expression. In the process of urbanization, villages have been undergoing earth-shaking changes since 1990s. These changes are reflected in Henan literature,especially in the process of the spatial changes and cultural fission of modern transformation in Henan. Henan writers, for example, Liu Zhenyun,Zhou Daxin,Li Peifu, Yan Lianke,Liu Qingbang, and so on, have described a relatively comprehensive village life, which greatly enriches the aesthetic implication of contemporary literature "village" images. Based on their description, we can have a glance at culture of central plains, including regional characteristics,spiritual connotation and the survival character of central plains, but also writer's thinking about Chinese culture, including running mechanism, national character and historical inner texture.More importantly, changes in the field of life style, ethical ideology and culture psychology happened in Henan village could be used as a cultural reference in the process of modernization of native China.Our present research focuses on "village" images in modern literature, especially in Henan village literature. Through exploring three main aspects of it, that is, writing style, the aesthetic construction and the internal structure of the changes, cultural metaphor, we intend to summarize achievements and limitations in Henan village literature. What is more, we will spare no effort to find out ways to express "village" images in a more liberal art space and possibilities to transcend current regional and ethnic writing in Henan literature. This thesis will be divided into four parts to analyze and discuss the image of "village" in Henan novels.The first chapter mainly investigates affecting factors in "village" images' description of Henan writers and their corresponding narrative expressions. As for affecting factors in "village"images, we find that local culture of the Central Plains and Henan writers' personal growing-up experience contribute to variations of emotional cognition and writing attitude to the village. As for narrative expressions, both cultural perspective and folk view are used by Henan writers in their "village" images' writing. There are two narrative patterns: "going out" of groups and"implantation" of culture, which bring about unique of "village" images in the aesthetic space presented in Henan literature.The second chapter studies the aesthetic construction of "village" images in Henan novels.We will shed light on aesthetic construction of "village" images of Henan writer in three aspects,that is, the ecological space, folk culture and character images, which will help us have a glance at the unique of regional culture in Central Plains and survival character of "Henan people". At the same time, we will also analyze changes in both state of affairs and cultural structure within the village patriarchal society, which will present changes in aesthetic characteristics of "village"images, especially from the period of 1990s.The third chapter studies the cultural metaphor of "village" images in Henan novels. We will comprehensively analyze different aesthetic patterns and cultural connotations of "village" images among Henan writers in three dimensions, that is, "The Waste Land Writing", "Homeland Imagination" and "Historical Writing", which originally derive from wilderness, homeland and history. This part is the core of present study.The fourth chapter studies the limitations of Henan literature in the view of "village" images.Because of present cultural context as well as villages' reality,there seems to be a dilemma in current village literature. Henan writers are more likely to describe villages in fields of suffering,power and nostalgia, but seldom explore philosophical thinking behind them. At the same time,they turn a deaf ear to the reality of village life, especially after the period of 90s, suggesting their lacking of courage to bear the reality. As for the expression of the village, it is still confined to the traditional regional culture, which undoubtedly remains a bottleneck for Henan writers. This chapter will investigate whether there is the unique of creative value in Henan village literature and possibilities to achieve a breakthrough in it.