The Research Of Lao She's Preface And Postscript

With ideology and culture transformation in Chinese history,many talented writers contributed to the development of Modern Chinese Literature.Lao She is one of the most outstanding and special ones among those masters.He was writing under the influences of multiple cultures and his masterpieces showed the differences of Manchu and Han culture,the diversity of eastern and western experience,and the similarity of old and new literature.He created a large number of literary works in the forms of fiction,drama,folk art,new poetry,classic poetry,and prose;and also wrote preface and postscript for various literary art forms of different people.Therefore,this article selected “preface and postscript written by Lao She” as the object of research.As much his preface and postscript as possible have been collected and summarized to study their characteristics,importance and significance in order to provide more information and possible direction for the study of preface and postscript and Lao She in the future.This essay is divided into five parts.The introduction presented the evolution process of preface and postscript in all ages and their functions,reviewed current development of this research topic and indicated the significance of this study and methods used in this paper.Chapter 1 provided an overview of preface and postscript written by Lao She.After classifying and summarizing all publicly viewable preface and postscript,this paper analyzed the writing characteristics and the writing philosophy behind to draw a general picture for the following research.Chapter 2 discussed the intertextuality between Lao She's preface and postscript and the respective literary work.Based on the “paratext theory” advanced by Gérard Genette,this chapter examined the intertextuality from two aspects: text intention is consistent with author intention,and author intention discloses the crack of text.The role that Lao She's preface and postscript played in judging and defining the author's work was also illustrated by explaining the text with “explicit metatextuality” and some concrete cases.Chapter 3 unearthed the literary thoughts in the preface and postscript.Lao She regarded himself as a “writer”.He was good at reflecting on his own literary ideology and had a wide range of interests,which could be seen in many of his preface and postscript works.Chapter 4 explored the value of Lao She's preface and postscript.Preface and postscript always are important historical materials in studying writers and their literary works.Lao She's preface and postscript revealed the sales status and public evaluation of the work after publication,his own life experience and his communication with friends on writing and the ordinary life,which were of substantial value to the study of Lao She.In addition,after comparing all the preface and postscript on the basis of writing time,this paper traced the change of his ideology and the reasons for the revision.Although the in-depth study of Lao She cannot be achieved only through preface and postscript,it can offer a breakthrough point to enrich the academic research.