A Study On The Regional Culture Of Xiangxi In Cai Cehai’s Novels

The rich connotation and distinctive characteristics of the regional culture in Xiangxi shape Cai Cehai’s spiritual character and influence his literary choices.As a writer of Xiangxi,Cai always focuses his writing on Xiangxi,showing the natural features,social customs and the public characters of Xiangxi.His novels present the rich connotation of Xiangxi regional culture to the readers,which is of great significance for inheriting Xiangxi regional culture and enriching Xiangxi regional literature.Based on the close reading of the text,this paper studies Cai’s novels from the following aspects.The introduction clarifies the basis of the topic selection,sorts out and elaborates the research status of Cai Cehai’s novels,thus to explain the concept of the Xiangxi regional culture,and discusses the research methods and main content of this paper.The first chapter is the presentation of the regional culture of Xiangxi in Cai Cehai’s novels,sorting out and analyzing the regional culture content of Xiangxi in his novels,which mainly includes three aspects: the regional nature of "deep water and high cliffs",the rich and simple regional customs,and the regional character of attaching importance to emotion,righteousness,pragmatism and toughness.The second chapter continuously discusses the present of Xiangxi regional culture in Cai’s novels,mainly from the narrative aspect of the novel.It is clear that the author presents the regional culture of Xiangxi from a variety of narrative perspectives,with the narrative identity of "the son of Xiangxi",using symbolic metaphor and prose narrative structure.The third chapter further analyses the motivation of Cai Cehai’s novels to present the regional culture of Xiangxi,primarily from both the author’s personal experience and external social factors to discuss the impact on his novel creation.The personal experiences involves the author’s childhood experience,deep feelings for his hometown Xiangxi and cultural self-confidence.While the external social factors include the influence of regional culture and the trend of literary creation in Xiangxi.What’s more,the fourth chapter reveals the significance of cultural history,literary history and social history in Cai Cehai’s novels from three aspects: the inheritance of Xiangxi regional culture,the enrichment and enlightenment of regional literature and the concerns about the individual’s survival and destiny in Xiangxi.The epilogue is a summary of the whole paper.In a word,Cai Cehai’s novels present the Xiangxi regional culture at various levels and reproduce the individual survival life of the people in Xiangxi.On the one hand,it shows the readers the mysterious charm of Xiangxi regional culture,on the other hand,it also enriches the literary image of Xiangxi in the minds of the readers,that plays a key role in inheriting Xiangxi regional culture and enriching Xiangxi literature.