| "Returning hometown" is an important theme that connects the creative process of Mo Yan’s novels.From entering the literary world in the early 1980s to publishing his new work A Late Bloomer in 2020,Mo Yan has written stories about"returning hometown" time and time again.Among them,there are more than 20 novels with "returning hometown" behavior of the first-person narrator as an important plot,forming a perpetual sequence of themes.Therefore,this paper intends to arrange the "returning hometown" stories which were told by the first-person narrator in Mo Yan’s novels from the 1980s to the present,and regard the research on "returning hometown" theme as an entry point to observe the close connection between Mo Yan’s novels with his own life experience,his description of the local people and stories in his hometown and the spiritual traits in this theme.At the same time,through the comparison between the "returning hometown" theme in Mo Yan’s novels with other writers’ novels in the modern and contemporary Chinese literature history,explore his unique writing style and cultural mentality.The main body of the paper is divided into three chapters:In the first chapter,there is a diachronic combing and analysis of the inter-relationship between the "returning hometown" theme and Mo Yan’s life experience.The first section focuses on Mo Yan’s childhood life in the country at least in his youth,mainly discussing the important role of rural life experience in the formation of his cultural mentality and the shaping of the "returning hometown"theme.On the one hand,the miserable life in the rural society made Mo Yan felt hatred of his hometown and had the urge to leave his hometown.On the other hand,the accumulation of personal experience and the influence of hometown culture later transformed into the important resource of the "returning hometown" theme in Mo Yan’s novels.The second section focuses on the realistic practice of Mo Yan’s"leaving hometown"and carefully sorts out his difficult process of getting out of the countryside and entering the literary world."Leaving hometown" has become a turning point in Mo Yan’s personal destiny.He has moved away from his hometown step by step by entering the factory,joining the army and attending school,creating conditions for "returning hometown" in the form of literature.The third section starts from the time point when Mo Yan entered the art academy of PLA,discussing how Mo Yan explored his own writing method in the early stage of literary creation,and how to achieve a double "returning hometown" in the content and form of his novels.In the second chapter,there is an induction about the character pedigree in the"returning hometown" theme in Mo Yan’s novels."Returning hometown and meeting acquaintances" as a classic expression of the "returning hometown" theme,which condenses the core content of Mo Yan’s writing about "returning hometown".In those novels,the writer portrays the local people and stories of his hometown by"returning hometown" of returnees.Depicting that the reconnection after the barrier of time and space can not only arouses the inner emotions closely entangled with the hometown,but also reflects the development and changes of the rural society caused by the changes of the times from the outside.Therefore,in this part,this paper starts with specific works and analyzes a series of male and female characters created by Mo Yan in the perspectives of military life,political life,economic life,and emotional life and marital life related to the returnees.It is worth noting that as a perpetual theme in Mo Yan’s novels,"returning hometown" has continued to the writer’s current writing,and the interpretation of the new qualities of the characters in A Late Bloomer could reveal the changes of Mo Yan’s writing mentality and his understanding about the new era.In the third chapter,there is an analysis of Mo Yan’s unique writing style and cultural mentality in "returning hometown" theme from the synchronic level.First,this paper explores the strong sense of homeland consciousness in "returning hometown" theme.It mainly shows that the writer pays special attention to the vitality of the "land" in the "returning hometown" literary theme,and the identification of blood relationship between relatives on the rural land.Therefore,Mo Yan’s novels often show the vivid rural scenery,the individual passions on the land and the exploration of the blood connection between the family relationship and the generations.Secondly,it discusses influence about the backtracking of memories and the expansion of historical consciousness in "returning hometown"theme.The returnees face the two worlds of their current hometown and past hometown.The memory of the past can be touched through the form of "returning hometown",which is an important feature of the "returning hometown" theme.The characteristic of Mo Yan’s writing lies in the fact that the returnees in his works can not only freely shuttle between the "field of memory" and the real situation,but can also use the vision of modern people to unfold the historical discourse of the rural society.Finally,with the help of narrative theories and comparative research methods,this paper makes a detailed interpretation of the first-person perspective repeatedly adopted in Mo Yan’s "returning hometown" theme and reveals the narrative characteristics of both reality and illusion,and the subject identity which is complex and multifaceted. |
