Chapter 44 The naming of the first section "New Century Literature"

In 2004, I conducted a general study on the trend of Chinese literature since the new century, and found that Chinese literature has indeed undergone many major and profound changes in the past five or six years. Therefore, I wrote an article discussing "New Century Literature" After that, he cooperated with others to further demonstrate the concept and aesthetic characteristics of "new century literature".At the same time, I found that many scholars and critics actively advocated and studied "New Century Literature". Zhang Yiwu and Zhang Weimin are both prominent scholars. Mr. Zhang Weimin also applied for a project on this: "New Century Literature Research".Corresponding to the positive attitude of scholars and critics, literary periodicals and publishing houses, either in the form of columns or in the form of book series, have shown the banner of "New Century Literature". It has been more than a year since Contending Literature and Art set up a special forum for "New Century Literature Research". A large number of scholars and critics have written articles to demonstrate the phenomenon of "New Century Literature" from various aspects. A hot topic in the literary world.Of course, some people have questioned this concept, thinking that it is too hasty to use the concept of "new century literature" only five or six years after the "new century" started, and it is a manifestation of placing too much emphasis on the concept of time.Some people even wonder if this is the same as in the mid-1980s, bombarding with new terms and trying to be different?

Faced with such a situation, our first task is to conduct a thorough analysis of the concept of "new century literature".Previously, I have discussed the essence and formation of this concept in the article, and this article will further discuss "new century literature", or in other words, what this article will discuss is from the perspective of the history of literature development, " How did the concept of "new century literature" come into being?How does it relate to the previous concept of periods in literary history?What is the context in which it was produced?What is its composition?How has the relationship with world literature changed?

It is generally believed that the time period of "modern literature" in China refers to the period from 1917 to 1949, and "contemporary literature" refers to the period from 1949 to the present."New century literature" refers to Chinese literature that began around 2000, and most scholars and critics still classify it as "contemporary literature," or in other words, it is still a period of "contemporary literature."However, in the mid-1980s, the concepts of "modern literature" and "contemporary literature" had already been widely questioned, and instead, the holistic view of "Chinese literature in the 20th century" and "new literature" proposed by people of insight " and other academic viewpoints, which imply the denial of the specific stages of literary history and the academic expectations of "modern literature" and "contemporary literature" that were once "blocked" by political ideology.However, it is a difficult problem to solve the problem of how to truly achieve a comprehensive study of "modern literature" and "contemporary literature". For the study of literary history, this is also an academic space that can be rediscovered.At the beginning of the new century, the author of this article put forward the academic view that "modern and contemporary literature is a whole" after sorting out the academic thinking since the 1980s in his treatise. Here, the author did not cancel "modern literature" and "contemporary literature" rashly. The concept of "literature" is just a re-understanding of this artificial division, that is, the two are a whole.The author also concretizes the overall view, regards "modern literature" and "contemporary literature" as a whole, and achieves a connection from the concept of time to the inner spirit, and makes a consistent view of modern and contemporary literature. Candlelight (concept)", "discovery and recasting of the national soul (main line of thought)", "dissociation and return (evolution of thoughts)", "collision of 'Westernization' and 'localization' (style)" etc. researched as a whole.This is different from the academic method of artificially dividing literature into stages, because its focus is on the overall study of literary history and the observation of the specific common characteristics of this whole.

The academic opinion that "modern and contemporary literature is a whole" is the theoretical basis of the concept of "new century literature". With the overall view of "modern and contemporary literature" as a frame of reference, it is possible for us to discuss new literature from the perspective of the history of literature development. literary phenomenon.Since "modern and contemporary literature is a whole" and "new century literature" is a part of "contemporary literature", then, in essence, the concept of "new century literature" still belongs to the subject category of "contemporary literature". Its concept has obvious pertinence, and when most people use this concept, it is mainly relative to "new period literature". The concept of "New Era Literature" has been around for nearly thirty years, which is almost as long as modern literature, and the current Chinese literature is very different from the situation when "New Era Literature" was first named. If this concept is used all the time Inappropriate, and replacing it with a new concept seems to be the answer.This is like a person who can be called by his nickname when he is young, but when he is older, it is not appropriate to still be called by his nickname.At this time, it is necessary and inevitable to propose a new phased literary name.Admittedly, whether "new century literature" will become a concept that only relies on time is one of the concerns of the academic circles. Compared with previous literature, is there any essential difference besides the pure time change?Where is it "new"?Cutting into the history of literature from this angle, we will find that, compared with "new era literature", Chinese literature since the "new century" has undergone great changes, and the concept of "new century literature" is by no means a simple The concept of time, it is more to explain the change of literature from the perspective of time, and this change is mainly relative to "literature of the new era".

Therefore, the concept of "new century literature" was not given by anyone, but by history, time, and literature itself.Moreover, this is an open concept, and the five or six years since 2000 are just a beginning. The nature and characteristics of "new century literature" will also be discovered, constructed and developed step by step in the process of its formation.In this sense, "new century literature" is not a concept that only summarizes the literary phenomena of the past few years. It needs to be demonstrated, sorted out, and perfected to make it more academic and scientific.

Putting "new century literature" into the big whole of "modern and contemporary literature", its formation process will show a relatively clear form.First of all, it needs to be clear that the concept of "contemporary literature" here is broad in time and integral in academic meaning.It has a relationship of "separate and combined" with "modern literature".Existing as a part of the whole of "modern and contemporary literature", there is no break in the development of literature itself, but researchers have artificially divided it into divisions.

Under such a background, we should start from the 1990s to investigate the formation process of "new century literature".Especially from 1993 to 1999, Chinese literature was based on a market economy that gradually infiltrated all aspects of social life. During this period, the historical environment of literature, the ideological connotation of literature itself, and the aesthetic spirit all had obvious changes. Changes can be regarded as the preparation period of "new century literature", and this preparation period can and should be included in "new century literature". In 1992, Deng Xiaoping delivered the "Southern Tour Speech", and Chinese society began to replace the planned economy with a market economy at a new level.Since then, Chinese literature has been impacted by the unprecedented marketization, and the literature system has also undergone great reforms. Writers have "entered the sea", literary journals and publishing houses have entered the market one after another. Literature is no longer a purely spiritual field, but gradually It has become a commodity that can be sold through packaging.This is undoubtedly an earth-shaking change for Chinese literature.The so-called "Eastern Expedition of the Shaanxi Army" by Shaanxi writers such as Jia Pingwa, Chen Zhongshi, Lu Yao, Gao Jianqun, the popularity of movie scripts and TV scripts by Wang Shuo and others, and the publicity of desire discourse are all results of the combination of marketization and literature. As a result, "personalized writing" has had a huge impact.Regarding this point, I have already done a detailed demonstration in the article "A Preliminary Discussion on New Century Literature", so I will not repeat it here. The development trend of "globalization" also had a huge impact on Chinese literature in the 1990s.At that time, in the eyes of many people, the material and spirit of the "Western" seemed to be a superior existence, so Chinese writers in the early 1990s often regarded the developed "Western" modern literature as a mirror of the development of Chinese literature , but their gradual understanding of the "West" led them to another conclusion, that is, the disappointment with this mirror and the cultivation of self-confidence.This plays a vital role in the confidence and practice of Chinese writers participating in world literature in "New Century Literature", and this is also one of the important phenomena of "New Century Literature", which we will discuss later.The emergence of different cultural forms, the open confrontation of different cultural standpoints and the division of intellectuals are another characteristic of literature in the 1990s.The cultural form of this period has been divided into three parts: "popular culture", "intellectual culture", and "national ideological culture", and the humanities intellectuals have also begun to clearly differentiate under the influence of this different cultural form. The discussion on "humanistic spirit" from 1993 to 1995 is one of the signs.Moreover, the late-century poetic debates about the cultural positions of 'intellectual' and 'folk' were also the result of this cultural synergy.

As far as literature itself is concerned, novels and prose became hot spots in literature in the 1990s, and the phenomenon of novels in 1993 is a typical example.Compared with the 1980s, the literature of this period began to retell history more, such as the works of Liu Zhenyun, Su Tong, Ling Li, Ye Zhaoyan, Chen Zhongshi, Yu Hua, Zhang Wei, Li Rui, etc., all show this common feature .At the same time, urban life and materialism became the main content of literature in the 1990s, and writers such as Zhu Wen, Zhang Xin, Qiu Huadong, and He Dun were representatives of this aspect. It is precisely because the literature in the 1990s has undergone profound changes compared with the literature in the 1980s that some scholars have believed that the "new era literature" has ended and the "post-new era" has arrived in the 1990s. Thank you Mian, Zhang Yiwu, Feng Jicai, Wang Ning and others.The influence of this point of view was limited at the time, but their vision and efforts were very valuable.Whether it is the title of "literature in the 1990s" or the definition of "post-new era", it is the recognition of the changes in the development process of literature.Today, when we look back at the Chinese literature of the 1990s, we will find that no matter what the name is, the literature of this period is very different from the literature of the 1980s in terms of cultural context and literature itself, and can be regarded as a part of "new century literature". preparation period.

After a preparatory period of less than ten years, "New Century Literature" was gradually formed in the process of literature development.Its generation is closely related to the social and cultural context at that time. The waves of marketization and globalization that have had an impact on literature in the 1990s are still continuing, but they have brought development and challenges at the same time. The emergence of ecological and spiritual crises has caused people to have deep doubts about it .One of the important impacts of marketization is that after literary works have become commodities, literature has become more and more marginalized, and the literary world in the traditional sense has become a situation where publications, books and the Internet are divided into three parts.The wave of globalization has had a major impact on the spiritual posture of Chinese writers in the new century, and this article discusses it in detail in the last section.

The high development of science has had a great impact on literature.Modern high technology has changed people's traditional way of life, and the tentacles of science have extended to all aspects of people's social life. While science creates matter, it has changed the classical spiritual world centered on faith and morality, and it has also greatly changed writers. creative psychology.And literature, as a spiritual reflection on human practice, cannot escape the fate of being influenced by it.Modernism, postmodernism, or postcolonialism and deconstruction in literature are not unrelated to the great influence of science. Many works of the "post-70s" and "post-80s" reflect to a certain extent the luck and misfortune, joy and depression, and even death brought by the scientific era, and even some writers of the "post-60s" also express such themes one after another.One of the biggest characteristics is the despair of the spirit and the trust in the material world."My body is my soul," they declared.

The impact of the emergence of the Internet on literature in the traditional sense is probably unprecedented. It has had a great impact on the creation method, attitude, depth and breadth of literature.In particular, the popularity of electronic books and the habit of reading on the Internet have brought about revolutionary changes in the form of literature dissemination, marking the advent of an era of fast food literature.It can be seen from various signs that books on electronic media, copying fast-food mass creations and increasingly hard-to-find elite creations constitute today's new literary situation.This is a literary era in which worries outweigh joys. The relationship between literature and culture has become more obvious in the past few decades. Literature is literature, and culture is culture. There is a distance between them. The rise of culture has made the relationship between culture and literature increasingly close.The diversity of literary expressions and the multiple influences of anthropology, psychology, and sociology make the cultural elements of literature prominent.Writers are turning into scholars, and literature is also pushing towards a deeper human nature.At the same time, the interactive relationship between literature and culture also constitutes the relationship between phenomenon and essence. Since 2006, academic fever has risen in the book market, while novels have cooled down.In fact, this phenomenon has been going on since the 1990s.The cultural proses of Yu Qiuyu, Xie Yong, Yu Jie, etc. are clear evidence, and since 2006, Yi Zhongtian's fever, Yu Dan's fever and Hongxue's fever have turned literature into culture. Only by understanding the preparation period and context of "new century literature" can we understand why discussions about "new century literature" appeared as soon as the new century came.As far as the available data are concerned, in 2000 alone, there were more than ten articles on "New Century Literature" published in journals.This number is not large, but it seems a bit unexpected to put it in the first year of the new century.However, this is to be expected given the period of preparation for New Century Literature.These articles discuss "new century literature" from the perspectives of literary expectations, literary functions, literary criticism, and literary outlets in the new century. Regrettably, none of these articles specifically discusses this new literary concept. Therefore, the subsequent debate on the naming of "new century literature" and the discussion on the construction of this literary concept become inevitable. From 2001 to 2004, there were more and more articles discussing "New Century Literature", but most of them remained in a speculative and one-sided study, and there was a lack of truly systematic research.Since 2005, "Literary Controversy" opened up a "New Century Literature Research" forum. At this time, a number of systematic research articles on "New Century Literature" appeared. a comprehensive review.It can be said that this periodical has played an important role in the construction of "New Century Literature".During this period, the academic circles also held "New Century Literature" and related forums and seminars, such as "New Century Literature Academic Strategy Famous Experts Forum", "New Century Literature Development Trend Seminar", "Ancient Chinese Literary Thoughts and New Century Literary Concept” and so on. Different from the previous naming of literary periods, the name of "new century literature" has appeared since the beginning of the new century.If we go back to the history of literature since 1917, we will find that the literature that began in 1917 was dubbed "New Literature" in the 1930s in the following ten years, such as Zhou Zuoren's "The Origin of Chinese New Literature" ( 1932), Wang Zhefu's "History of Chinese New Literature Movement" (1933), and "Chinese New Literature" (1935-1936) edited by Zhao Jiabi.The large-scale use of the name "modern literature" came in the middle and late 1950s.However, "New Century Literature" uses this concept at the same time as literature occurs, which makes some researchers suspicious.There are two main questions they question: First, why did this concept suddenly emerge?That is, does it have any academic basis, and will it place too much emphasis on time and ignore the literary characteristics and significance behind time?Second, if "new century literature" uses time to understand Chinese literature in the new century, how long does it cover? In terms of the characteristics and significance behind the time, we can say that "new century literature" is related to the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal literature of the May Fourth period, the national revolutionary war literature of the 1930s and 1940s, and the class struggle of the 1950s and 1970s Compared with the planned economy literature in the 1980s, there are obvious differences. In terms of the meaning of time coverage, when answering questions, we must clearly realize that the concept of "new century literature" was born at the beginning of this literary period, and its generation is mainly due to the academic circle's understanding of the period from 2000 to the present. Produced by an investigation of literary changes, this concept has been gradually endowed with academic connotations and meanings during the process of formation. It is not a purely temporal concept, but what it highlights are mainly the changes in the development of literature. not time.Although "the 'time' of Chinese literature is a way of understanding Chinese literature, a historical way, and the most realistic way" (Zhang Weimin), we should pay more attention to the meaning of the characteristics of literature, otherwise, Such a naming will be like "20th century Chinese literature". While emphasizing the overall view of literature with time, it is difficult to truly penetrate the overall view into the bones and blood of literary history.As a period of "contemporary literature", the time coverage of "new century literature" is uncertain. "Contemporary literature" itself is broad in terms of time, and "contemporary" is special as a concept of time, while "contemporary literature" in China refers to literature since 1949, and we regard it as a part of the whole of "modern and contemporary literature" , and "New Century Literature" is another installment of it.In this way, the time of "new century literature" has the characteristics of openness. It can refer to the literature after 2000 to the present, or it can refer to the literature of a longer period within the 21st century.However, it is also time-unknowable. At present, we propose it to highlight the new changes in literature in the new century. It has a psychological and cultural implication on the basis of physical time, that is, It implies people's cultural imagination after Chinese literature entered the new century.Therefore, "new century literature" may become a staged and transitional name in the history of literature, just like "literature in the new era", but after it is generated, it becomes a memory in literature and a term in the history of literature. With the development of literature and the development of literary history, it has been weakened or even disappeared.