Modernism's "Detour" And "Breakthrough"

This thesis focuses on Gao Xingjian's "A Preliminary Exploration of Modern Fiction Techniques" and returns it to the context of modernism in the early 1980 s.Purpose of the research is to clarify the core issues and the controversies.From the aspects of technology-literature and modern-tradition,the thesis analyses Gao Xingjian's "breakthrough" in his defense of the “detour” of modernist literature.Firstly,the thesis analyses the translation and dissemination of western modernist novels in China during the “17 years” period.In the “17 years” period,China did not “close itself off” as many people believed from their observations,but organized translations and introduced a large number of Western modernist novels.Although these "Yellow Books" were not published publicly rather existed in the form of internal books,in the period of “Great Cultural Revolution”,a large number of these internal reference books were dispersed throughout society and secretly expanded.It is this modern school undercurrent,based on the Yellow Books foreshadowed the debates of the modernists in the early 1980 s.Second,through the review of the events surrouding the “four small kites”,the thesis discusses the “recurrence” of[ “recurrence” of the modernist school controversy.Li Tuo,Liu Xinwu,and Feng Jicai's series of communications articles published in "A Preliminary Exploration of Modern Fiction Techniques" shared similarities and differences in the discussion of the modernist school.This shows Gao Xingjian's unique vision in challenging “socialist realism” in the early 1980 s.Third,two discursive strategies for showing the rationality of modernism in "A Preliminary Exploration of Modern Fiction Techniques".One of the strategies was to remove the political ideological implications of the modernist school by equating techniques and technology.The socialist countries has long viewed it as a literary coming form the decandence and decline of capitalist society.At the beginning of reform and opening up,freeing science and technology from politics and viewing them as the prima productive force was an important way to establish a modernized ideology in the new era.Through this esteem for science and technology,Gao Xingjian interpreted modernism as a literary technique and at the same time aimed to justify modernist novels and liberate them from political constraints.The second strategy was link modernist formalism with tradiational Chinese culture in order to break up the westernness and political ideology behind this formalism.Gao Xingjian listed a large number of classical Chinese novels in his books,such as "A Dream of Red Mansions","Journey to the West" and "Strange Tales of a Lonely Studio".He intentionally exaggerated some formal element with modernist characteristics,came to the conclusion that modernism existed in ancient China.At the same time,he gave examples of elements of modernist formalism in the work of a large number of recognized realist masters such as Lu Xun,Mao Dun,Tolstoy,and Balzac,among others,through this illustrated how modernist writing techniques and realism actually coexist.In the end,the thesis combines Gao Xingjian's modern party's famous "Detour" strategy in "A Preliminary Exploration of Modern Fiction Techniques" with his novels,pointing out that Gao Xingjian's novel experiment is not a playful technique,but expresses intellectual content through the exploration of novel techniques.The purpose of his work has many similarities with the mainstream literature.Gao Xingjian did not delve deeply into the inner parts of western modernist literature in order to counter “socialist realism” from the viewpoint,thinking and so on of modernism and realism.He was not trying to call forth the West's lonely,decadent individual through literature.In the early 1980 s,his work was not completely disconnected from politics.Under the relationship between literature and politics,he provided technical dimension of equal importance with politics,and tried to establish a relation between the "modernist" and Chinese literary traditions.