About Chen Sihe

Publications: Bajin's Essays (with Li Hui), The Development of Personality: A Biography of Bajin, Review and Prospect of Bajin's Studies, An Overall View of New Chinese Literature, A Course on the History of Contemporary Chinese Literature (ed.), The Influence of Foreign Involvement in the History of Modern Chinese Literature (edited with the assistance of Prof. Jia Zhifang), The Relationship of Twentieth-Century Literature Between China and Foreign Countries (vol. 1) (ed.), Jiming Wind and Rain, Penwalking the Dragon and Snake, Selected Works of Chen Sihe. (edited by Prof. Jia Zhifang), The Wind and Rain of Chicken Calling, The Pen Walks the Dragon and the Snake, and Chen Sihe's Self-Excerpted Collections.

The Significance of Chen Sihe's Academic Thought

Anyone who cares about the study of twentieth-century Chinese literature and the survival of contemporary intellectuals, no matter whether you are in favor of him or against him, will probably notice Chen Sihe's work and achievements in this academic field. With his rigorous style of governance and passionate spirit of exploration, he has provided people with new ways of thinking about the study of literary history. In particular, his contemporary stance and sense of mission to undertake the cultural construction of the present time, as shown in his research on the history of literature, have always made his academic research pass through the barrier of phenomena and enter into the deep layers of society, history, culture and literary existence, reflecting certain characteristics of the academic pursuit and strength of character of this generation of intellectuals.

Chen Sihe is not a scholar who hides in a bookstore looking for chapter and verse. From the proposal of "20th century literature" in 1985 to the advocacy of "rewriting literary history" in 1988, and then to the discussion of "the search for the spirit of humanism" in 1994, Chen Sihe is an active respondent and participant, but in the academic hotspots composed of the "**** name", he has always been standing in the position of the publication of their academic insights and intellectual achievements. But in the "*** name" of these academic hotspots, he has always stood on his own position to express his academic insights and intellectual achievements, showing the serious attitude of a contemporary thinker. In the concept of "20th century literature", one important element is to make a link between the literary history of the recent, modern and contemporary periods, but Chen Sihe insisted on the pioneering significance of the May Fourth New Literature in the 20th century literature, and used it to construct his holistic way of thinking; in the interpretation of "rewriting the history of literature", he emphasized on advocating the "spirit of skepticism", and after a few years of exploration, he proposed a set of literary history constructed on the basis of "folk" theory; in "rewriting literary history", he emphasized on promoting "spirit of doubt", and after several years of exploration, he proposed a set of "folk" theory. In the discussion of "Searching for Humanism", he has been using his own thinking and language to express his thoughts on the change of value orientation and historical destiny of intellectuals in the 20th century, whose significance obviously exceeds the position of enlightenment, and endeavors to explore the new roundness of the intellectuals in the construction of contemporary culture. Closely related to these three aspects is his self-contained "holistic view" and "skepticism" research methodology: the so-called "holistic view" means that he always puts the object of his research in the context of the history of literature in order to grasp and examine it as a whole; the so-called "skepticism" means that he always has a deep understanding of the established academic thinking and academic framework. The so-called "skepticism" means that he is always y skeptical of the established academic ideas, academic frameworks, and academic definitions, and always gives introspection, questioning and denial with reverse thinking, so as to seek new insights in the broken. He is the use of "holistic view" and "deep skepticism" to complete the above three aspects of thinking. Therefore, the discussion of Chen Sihe's academic thought and his research method not only helps us to understand the unique significance of his academic thought, but also has a significant revelation for the further development of 20th century literary research and the reconstruction of intellectual spirit. In this essay, we will focus on Chen Sihe's academic thought embodied in the study of literary history.

I

After the Cultural Revolution, a new generation of Chinese scholars, in the trend of ideological liberation, felt the urgency of changing the previous ideological and literary concepts, and they longed for creativity, for the establishment of a new literary concept and cultural concept, which is reflected in the study of the history of modern Chinese literature in the connection between the May Fourth New Literature and the New Period Literature and found some kind of In the study of the history of modern Chinese literature, this is reflected in the search for a certain point of convergence between the May Fourth New Literature and the New Period literature. In rethinking and evaluating the May Fourth New Literary Tradition, they injected fresh and vivid vigor into the cultural construction of China's new period. Each of their interpretations of the new cultural traditions is connected to the reflection on contemporary literature and contemporary culture, so that the past literary history presents a new style in their writing, and this new interpretation in turn acts on contemporary literature and culture, constituting an extremely important spiritual resource for contemporary humanities.

When a new concept of culture and literature is born, it is inevitably accompanied by a revolution in the method of academic research, because only a new research method can undertake and express new ideas and passions. It is in this historical background that a wave of "method fever" was set off in the literary and academic circles at that time, and a variety of methods came and went: cybernetics, systematics, information theory and other research methods attracted widespread attention, and people tried to use these new research methods to break through the stereotyped thinking mode and gain a broad space for literary research. The significance of this exploration cannot be ignored, but because most of these new methods are transferred from abroad, lack of practical relevance, and cannot compete with the traditional way of thinking and vulgar sociological methods, especially in the use of these new research methods in the study of Chinese literature, the tendency of dogmatism and the disadvantages of simplicity have been exposed, which is the main reason why the "methodological craze" lasted for a very short period of time and then went into a lull. However, in the field of twentieth-century Chinese literature, the research method of "holistic view" proposed by Chen Sihe is an effective, practically meaningful and creative research method, whose research results are specifically reflected in the study of Bakin and the book of "Holistic View of New Chinese Literature". In Chen Sihe's view, the history of modern Chinese literature has never been a text of the past, but an unfinished and open discipline, and we, as people in the history of literature, are able to find spiritual power from the history of literature flowing from us in the face of contemporary reality. As he said, "Since the 20th century, Chinese literature has constituted an open whole in time and space, but it is an organic whole, and the phenomena of each period of its development have existed as causes in the literature of the previous period, and have nurtured fruits for the literature of the latter period, and it has been in contact with the socio-political, economic, ideological, cultural and psychological aspects of modern China. It regulates its own law in the constant exchange with external factors such as modern Chinese society, economy, trend of thought, culture and psychology, and adapts to this exchange with the change and development of its own law to seek a balanced corresponding position. And only because it is open-ended, this whole will change with the changes of all kinds of factors in modern society, with new elements seeping into its orbit every moment, and any kind of new element, once added to this whole, i.e., incorporated into the organic structure of the whole, will lead to a series of revaluation of the elements within this whole." (New Literature in China: Preface) The significance of this new literature as a whole proposed by Chen Sihe is that it not only breaks the simplistic way of thinking that used to be attached to political concepts, changes the landscape of literary history as described in the past, and provides a new angle of thinking for some outstanding academic problems, but also brings a passionate and exploratory conception of literary history, and a renewal of the framework of the whole study of literary history. It has also brought about a passionate and exploratory conception of literary history and revolutionized the entire framework of literary history research. It is with this "holistic view" research method that Chen Sihe conducted in-depth research on issues such as "the relationship between new literature and Chinese and foreign literature", "the relationship between various factors within new literature", "the role and significance of folk culture forms in new literature", and "the relationship between new-period literature and the May Fourth Literary Tradition", and put forward fresh, unique, and insightful opinions, bringing modern ideas closely related to the cultural construction and literary development of the new period into the new era. He brought modern ideas closely related to the cultural construction and literary development of the new period into contemporary life, found the basis for change and spiritual support for the contemporary literary phenomenon, and further established the position and significance of the contemporary literary phenomenon in the overall connection. For example, his discussion of modernism in Chinese twentieth-century literature. The emergence of modernist literary elements in the literature of the new period has aroused heated debates in the literary circles, with some affirming and praising and some denying and criticizing, but lacking solid theoretical analysis and literary historical judgment. Chen Sihe puts this contemporary literary phenomenon in the context of the whole twentieth-century literature, analyzes the ways, characteristics, and significance of the acceptance of Western modernism in May Fourth literature, and then analyzes the fate of the modernist literary factors in the development of the new literature, pointing out that the reason why modernism is associated with the new literature in China is due to the remarkable modern consciousness it embodies, specifically in the May Fourth period. The anti-social and anti-traditional features of modernism attracted the attention of modern Chinese writers. However, due to the lack of a solid cultural background for the development of modernist literature in China, it did not last long before going into decline. If modernist literature was to have a far-reaching impact, it had to be integrated with Chinese national culture, and modernism had to be fused with national culture, as exemplified by Lu Xun's and Guo Moruo's creations. In the 1930s and 1940s after the May Fourth Movement, due to the failure to deal with the relationship between foreign culture and national culture, the modernist literary factor could not play a more important role (this phenomenon was of course related to the political, economic and cultural background of the time). Chen Sihe puts forward the problem of modernist literature as above from the overall connection of Chinese literature in the twentieth century, which undoubtedly has an exquisite theoretical explanation of modernism in Chinese new-period literature, and at the same time points out that modernism in new-period Chinese literature can only have a constant vitality if it is fused with the national culture. This theoretical analysis not only explains the significance, value, and development direction of modernism in Chinese literature of the new period, but also re-evaluates the modernism of the 1920s, thus expanding the research space of the history of new literature. In this way, we can also see that the research method of Chen Sihe's "holistic view" is of great practical significance in the study of 20th-century literature.

From the above, we can see that the main feature of Chen Sihe's "holistic" research method is a two-way comparative analysis process from the present back to the past, and from the past to the present, with a foothold in the present, and with the aim of expanding the space of literary history and searching for and enriching the resources of humanistic spirit.

With the further development of Chinese literature in the twentieth century, this "holistic" research method has shown its solid strength and vitality. After the 1990s, the shape of literary existence changed greatly, and writers' writing positions and artistic expressions seemed to become more and more individualized, that is to say, writers became more and more detached from the world of "****same discourse" and tried to construct their own writing space. Chen Sihe was extremely sensitive to this change, and from the overall connection of twentieth-century Chinese literature, he raised the question of anonymity and ****-name, and tried to grasp the change and development of the whole twentieth-century literature with anonymity and ****-name. He said, "When the times contain significant and unifying themes, the materials for intellectuals to think about and explore problems come from the themes of the times, and the independence of the individual is concealed under the themes of the times. We might as well call such a state of affairs the *** name; and cultural work and literary creation in such a state of affairs become derivatives of the *** name. When the era enters a relatively stable, open and pluralistic social period, people's spiritual life is becoming increasingly rich, the kind of major and unified theme of the times often can not gather the spiritual direction of the nation, so the value of pluralism, *** born **** the existence of the cultural state will appear. Cultural work and literary creation reflect a part of the theme of the times, but fail to achieve a '****-name state', which we call nameless. Namelessness is not the absence of themes, but the coexistence of multiple themes." From such a theoretical base, Chen Sihe believes that the literature of the 1930s and the 1990s are "no-name states," while the literature of the May Fourth period and the 1980s can be called "****-name states." Although he thinks that the literature of the 1990s has not completely entered the "no-name state", but only found similar factors in some of the literary phenomena, his description of the literature of the 1930s provides us with a frame of reference for understanding the 1990s. In his view, the literature of the 1930s was literature in a state of anonymity, with the following characteristics: true anonymity arose in the era of "the dissolution of Wang Gang," as Zhou Zuoren put it, but whether in the 1930s or in other eras later on, China probably couldn't do it yet, and what was referred to here was the wavering of the intellectuals' understanding of the social development of ****same. The intellectuals in the "anonymous state" are facing the society as individuals, and they still have the right to independent thinking and personal standpoints, which also includes the right to choose some kind of public **** ideological standpoints. Because there is no ****same theme of the times in the state of anonymity, literary creation cannot succeed on the basis of an external social theme, so creation will be tilted towards the ontology of language and art.What are the characteristics of the literature of the 1930s in comparison with that of the 1990s? Chen Sihe provides a frame of reference for us to understand the literature of the 1990s from the overall thinking of Chinese literature in the 20th century, which not only brings new understanding of the literature of the 1990s, but also generates new evaluation of the literature of the 1930s, and provides new vitality for the further deepening of literary research. Here we see the role of the "holistic view" in the study of 20th-century Chinese literature, which is a practical and effective research method in today's literary studies.

Second

The research method of "holistic view" not only embodies the contemporary character of "history" and the spirit of bold and passionate exploration, searching for the significance, characteristics, and value of the object of study at different stages of literary history, but also embodies the pursuit of "unique discourse", using unique words and perspectives to express a unique understanding of the history of literature, in order to form its own unique concept of literary history. The concept of literary history.

The content of 20th century literature is extremely broad and complex, history and reality. Enlightenment and salvation, the social responsibility and aesthetic function of literature, the reasonable value of tradition and the freedom of individuality, the tendency of modern culture and the influence of Western culture, etc. are not simple correspondences, but are full of contradictions, and there is a collision between the reasonable and unreasonable. Chen Sihe's bold spirit of exploration in the face of the complexity of twentieth-century literature is always based on the principle of seeking truth from facts, and he "deconstructs" the established academic viewpoints and restores the historical truth that has been distorted by prejudices in the "overall" connection of various issues related to literature, proposing the Chineseization of "Enlightenment Literature" and "Enlightenment of Literature," "Confession of Human Beings" and "Confessed Human Beings," and "Modernism" and "Realism. The Chineseization process of "modernism" and "realism", the "spirit of realistic combat in new Chinese literature" and other ideas of profound academic significance, especially when he put the above issues in the development process of the whole 20th century literature, analyzed the evolution process of each other's mutual growth in the connection of various social and cultural trends, sought the spiritual resources of the contemporary culture, and revealed the unique law of the development of Chinese literature in the 20th century. Here we should fully emphasize the "global" character of Chen Sihe's "holistic" research method and his overall grasp of the relationship between various factors within the new literature. Starting from the new factors in contemporary culture and literature, he traces the development process of literature in the whole twentieth century, and analyzes each specific issue in connection with the world cultural trend and the cultural characteristics of the specific era. It is precisely in this connection that he sees the mutation of the western culture and literary trend into the new literature of China and the significance of this mutation, and sees the modern cultural trend in the process of mutation. It is in this connection that he saw the mutation of Western culture and literary trends when they entered China's new literature and the significance of this mutation, as well as the uniqueness of the mutual constraints and development of modern cultural, political, and literary trends in the process of mutation. Therefore, the "new literary tradition" as understood by Chen Siho has a content different from that of other people, and presents a unique ideological personality and a unique form of discourse expression, which is summarized in the following aspects.

(1) Beyond the restraints of the Enlightenment tradition, the return of the body of literature is proposed. The whole 20th century literature and the "enlightenment" are inextricably linked, and the May Fourth New Literature is the crystallization of enlightenment. It is for this reason that in the trend of intellectual liberation in the 1980s, many scholars put forward the ideas of "returning to the May Fourth" and "returning to Lu Xun", etc. This passion of thought calling for a "return" is of great significance to the development of social thought, which not only actively extends the "tradition of enlightenment" of the New Literature in the contemporary era but also reconnects the interrupted "tradition of enlightenment". As a strong contemporary thinker, Chen Sihe also attaches great importance to the significance of the Enlightenment Tradition in contemporary social and cultural life, but he is also conscious of the fact that simply emphasizing on the "literature of Enlightenment" may neglect the construction of literary ontology. He thus made a new interpretation of "enlightenment", which he thought should contain two meanings: the first one is that the new literature adapted to the needs of enlightenment by means of stylistic changes (e.g., dissemination of new ideas in the vernacular), and took literature as a means to undertake the ideological enlightenment of the New Culture Movement; the second one is that the process of stylistic revolution of the new literature constructed a new kind of aesthetic spirit by means of the vernacular, and redefined what literature is in the modern sense. The second is the process of revolutionizing the new literature, constructing a new aesthetic spirit in the vernacular language, and redefining what literature is in the modern sense. The former is called the "literature of enlightenment" and the latter is called the "enlightenment of literature". Looking back at the contemporary version of the history of modern literature and the study of modern literature in the early 1980s, the "enlightenment of literature" was relatively neglected, and this neglect itself led to the indifference to the essence of literature, which was obviously unfavorable to the development of literature itself. Chen Sihe proposed the coexistence of two kinds of enlightenment in the May Fourth period, and then analyzed the significance of the two kinds of enlightenment in the process of the development of new literature, analyzed the destiny of the two kinds of enlightenment in each other's development and even weakening, and believed that the "enlightened literature" and the "literary enlightenment "**** together constituted an important part of the new literary tradition. The unique significance of Chen Sihe's viewpoint lies in the fact that he liberates the human aesthetic spirit and the literary ontology from the established "Enlightenment Tradition", emphasizes it as one of the aspects of the Enlightenment Tradition as he understands it, and argues for its significance in the process of the development of new literature. From a historical point of view, he enriched the spiritual connotation of new literature, and from a practical point of view, he reminded people not to neglect the construction of literary ontology when carrying out social enlightenment; objectively speaking, this point of view had a driving effect on the development of Chinese literature in the new period. The various and colorful artistic expressions brought about by the "genre fever" after the mid-1980s were related to a group of scholars and critics who advocated the "literary ontology", among which Chen Sihe's voice could not be ignored.

(2) Transcending the opposition between Westernization and tradition and reassessing the significance of tradition. The relationship between Western culture and traditional Chinese culture has been a striking and significant issue in the development of culture and literature in this century. The May Fourth New Culture Movement was a fierce anti-traditionalist gesture for a new cultural reconstruction. In the "cultural root-seeking" trend that emerged in 1985, the writer Ah Cheng argued that the May Fourth Movement had undeniable progressive significance in social change, but that it had adopted a nihilistic attitude toward national culture in a more comprehensive way, and that, coupled with China's ongoing social upheaval, it had led to the continuation of the national culture's rupture to the present day, thus advocating the search for the roots of the national culture. In the same period of time, some other viewpoints believe that the Chinese cultural tradition as a whole is an obstacle to social progress and development, and advocate the use of Western culture to transform Chinese culture, advocating the full acceptance of Western cultural thought. It was against this background that Chen Sihe wrote the article "The Understanding of Cultural Tradition in New Chinese Literature and Its Evolution". After fully affirming the significance of the anti-traditionalism of May Fourth literature, he argued that there were two forms of thinking that had constrained people's understanding of tradition since the May Fourth period: (1) from the principle of the theory of social evolution, he believed that Western culture was superior to Chinese culture, and that in order for China to develop, it was necessary to transform it with Western culture; and (2) in the mechanical comparison of Chinese and Western cultures, he argued that Western culture was superior to Chinese culture. mechanical comparison of Chinese and Western cultures, they conclude that China is materially inferior to the West, but its spiritual civilization is the best in the world. These two forms of thinking are both simple and one-sided. The former ignores the difference between "cultural form" and "social form", while the latter severs the dialectical relationship between "material civilization and spiritual civilization". Therefore, to transcend these two forms of thinking and to evaluate the tradition on a higher theoretical level not only involves the evaluation of the whole new literature, but is also a practical theoretical proposition of great significance at that time. After systematically sorting out the various attitudes toward "tradition" in the process of the development of new literature, Chen Siho put forward the idea that "the highest form of culture is the form of beauty", and from the perspective of literary ontology and aesthetic form, he thought that on the basis of the modern consciousness of the world formed by the development of science in the twentieth century, the literature of the new period gained a brand-new understanding and awareness of the national culture, which consciously transformed itself into the form of culture and aesthetics, and accommodated the basic aesthetic characteristics of literary creation. The basic aesthetic characteristics of literary creation are unprecedented since the May Fourth Movement. It is on this basis that Chen Sihe went beyond the view of denying tradition from the perspective of historical evolution and denying Western material civilization from the perspective of "spiritual superiority", that is to say, beyond the opposition between "Westernization" and "tradition", and found the basic yardstick for reevaluating the tradition and gained a renewed understanding of the tradition in the midst of "beauty" and the essence of literature. In relation to the current practice of literary creation, this actually involves the major issue of how to "create" the literature of the nation. The literature of the new period has gone through more than ten years' journey, but how many literary works have a real modern consciousness and national personality? Chen Sihe's point of view will give us due inspiration.

(3) Transcending the ends of modernism and realism, so that the new literary tradition contains the spirit of modernism and the spirit of realism. The spirit of modernism as the tradition of new literature is a topic neglected by researchers. This is the result of not fully realizing the characteristics, cultural background and extensive worldwide connection of May Fourth Literature. Chen Sihe, in his article "The Consciousness of Repentance in the Development of New Chinese Literature", after analyzing the characteristics of the "consciousness of repentance" of the traditional Chinese intellectuals, puts forward two different kinds of consciousness of repentance in the modern social trend: one is the "repentant aristocracy" represented by Tolstoy and others; the other is the repentance of the "human desires" represented by Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky's confession of "human desire" was the forerunner of the European modernist trend of understanding of man's own self. It is worth noting that this realization did not lead to despair, but rather to a more realistic recognition of the true nature of man and a re-establishment of his own value and status. This is the reason why in modern Western society, under the bubble of decadent spiritual phenomena, there still exists a surging and rushing current of human nature. Under the special historical and cultural background of the convergence of Chinese and Western cultures, the strong sense of "human repentance" in Western modernism was a powerful attraction for the new writers of the May Fourth period, who not only realized the limitations and values of human beings, but also realized the goal of the anti-feudalism with the help of this sense of repentance. As Chen Sihe wrote in his analysis of Lu Xun's Diary of a Madman, "He (Lu Xun) broke through the obscurity of Chinese people's self-knowledge with his loud and clear cries, and made people see clearly their own faces and their own souls." The Diary of a Madman "for the first time casts a deep doubt on all the moral values of man, and utters a heart-stopping cry on how man should free himself from the bestial instincts inherited from his primitive ancestors and adapt himself to the requirements of modern civilization." The deep pain felt by the madman for "cannibalism" reflects man's deep repentance for his own evil behavior. This is an understanding of "man's original sin" based on the theory of evolution, y imprinted with modern consciousness. Here we see that the confessional consciousness of Western modernism is closely connected with the "realistic fighting spirit" of modern Chinese intellectuals. The so-called "realistic fighting spirit" is the writer's "fighting attitude to criticize the social status quo with tension and intervene in contemporary life with enthusiasm". The fusion of the two makes modern writers' concern for reality and for human beings themselves more rich and powerful. The "fighting spirit of reality" is the tradition of new Chinese literature, and it is also the basic spirit of the new literary tradition of realism. In the difference between realism and modernism, Chen Sihe found the connection between the two from the special background of Chinese new literature, pointing out that the spirit of modernism and the spirit of realism are the most important contents in the tradition of Chinese new literature, which is of great significance to our comprehensive understanding of the spiritual resources of the tradition of new literature.

From the above discussion, we can see that the problems raised by Chen Sihe with the research method of "holistic view" and the understanding of the tradition of new literature have a unique ideological personality. This personality is where his strength lies, and this strength is still influential in the current literary development.

III

Chen Sihe and Wang Xiaoming jointly put forward the proposition of "rewriting literary history" in 1988. This proposition embodies a strong spirit of skepticism. In terms of specific research methodology, the spirit of skepticism is a kind of falsification, that is, to break down some established concepts and return the original face of the research object. This kind of skepticism and falsification has always been an important feature of Chen Sihe's academic research. From the beginning of the study of Ba Jin, each of his academic research topics reflect the "falsification" of the courage and passion, and his "holistic" research method **** with the main personality of its academic research.

"Rewriting literary history" is a kind of falsification, in the process of "rewriting", the free spirit of the research subject, imagination space, passion for thought has been fully embodied, specifically expressed in the academic research of Chen Sihe is a new way of thinking about the study of Bajin and the proposed "folk" theory. In the study of Ba Jin, Chen Sihe put forward many widely influential ideas, especially noteworthy is that he proposed in 1994 to change the idea of Ba Jin research, that Ba Jin research can not be satisfied with the so-called mainstream mode of the times to Ba Jin (such as Ba Jin's patriotism, anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism, etc.), and can not be stayed in the "intellectuals on the square" in the sense of the power of personality, but should be Instead, we should return to Bazin himself and the era in which he lived. Therefore, Chen Sihe thinks that the significance of Bakin in the 1930s does not lie in the fact that his works of thought show us a kind of Enlightenment fighting passion, but precisely in the fact that they show us the many possible choices and attempts made by a modern intellectual towards China's destiny; at the same time, they also show the painfully complicated mentality of modern intellectuals when their value tends to be transformed from the "square" to the "post". This kind of viewpoint naturally includes the current thinking of a contemporary scholar, and more importantly, it reflects the skepticism of a contemporary scholar who "falsifies", and this skepticism is more fully reflected in Chen Sihe's academic research of reinterpreting the history of Chinese literature since the War with the theory of "folklore".

Chen Sihe takes the discourse of political rights, folk cultural forms, and the elite consciousness of intellectuals as the three major blocks to reintegrate the history of Chinese literature since the War. This change in the angle of academic research, on the one hand, expands the theoretical horizon and provides a new field for the study of literary history; on the other hand, it also potentially embodies a certain kind of recognition of the elite consciousness of intellectuals to the folk cultural forms in the current era, and obtains a more tangible and broader thinking space in the recognition.

The concept of "folk" put forward by Chen Sihe refers to the real cultural space that has already appeared in the history of Chinese literature in the twentieth century, and has survived and developed in its own way, and nurtured a certain kind of prospect of literary history. It has two main meanings: firstly, it is the vision of literary creation that observes, expresses and describes life according to the direction of the folk's own way of life, i.e., the way of village culture from the traditional Chinese countryside and the way of secular culture from the modern economy and society; secondly, it refers to the fact that although the writers speak from the traditional standpoint of the intellectuals, what they express is the folk's own state of life and the folk's aesthetic interests. Because the writers noticed the existence of folk as an object and adopted the newborn equal dialog, these literary creations were filled with folk meanings. When Chen Sihe starts from such an academic position, in the interpenetration of political rights discourse, intellectual elite consciousness and folk cultural forms. When Chen Sihe describes the evolution of literary history from such an academic standpoint, in the concrete connection of mutual confrontation, we see that literary history is not a monolithic scene with authoritarian coloring under the guidance of political ideology and the discourse of political rights that incorporates folk culture and elite culture, but it has become colorful and many established conclusions have changed, and many forgotten literary phenomena have been rediscovered. For example, the tragedy of Zhao Shuli's novels. Zhao Shuli, as the embodiment of a folk cultural form, is not only recognized by political rights and valued as a "classic", but also rejected for his "folk" characteristics, which are fully recognized by politics, and trapped in the anguish of creation. Zhao Shuli, as a representative, provides an important theoretical perspective for us to understand the literary creation since the 1940s. For example, the "folk invisible structure" in the 50's and even in the model operas and novels of the new period reminds us that the "folk form" will not easily disappear from literary creation, and that it constitutes an extremely important clue to the development of literature, and that the significance of the "folk" in the history of literature has come to the fore here.

Chen Sihe's theory of "folk", as I roughly understand it, mainly contains several elements: (1) the objective existence of the folk space, which contains the folk's way of life and the folk have been deposited into the objective existence of the folk spirit; (2) the folk spirit of the main body of literary creation. There is a difference between these two kinds of spirit. The former is not viewed by the "intellectual mind", and therefore has a relatively weak control of state power and a free and easy aesthetic style. The latter folk spirit is associated with the elite consciousness of intellectuals (even if the writer sinks into the folk culture, I am afraid that it is difficult to fully integrate the individual spirit), and therefore its value orientation is relatively clear, and its aesthetic characteristics are characterized by individuality, which is precisely the reason for the difference in the style of the writers who express the folk life. In order to differentiate between these two spirits, we call the latter "human feelings". From the practice of literary creation since the 1940s, we can see that all the connections and confrontations between folk cultural forms, political rights ideology, and the elite consciousness of intellectuals are expressed through the writers' "human feelings", which, as an intermediary link from folk cultural forms to the completion of literary works, collects the pain of choice, the bitterness of repression, and the joy of identification, as Chen Sihe has already shown in Jieming Wind and Rain. This point has been brilliantly explained by Chen Sihe in The Wind and Rain of Chicken Song. So what kind of content is included in "human feelings"? Firstly, it is the recognition of folk life and folk spirit, that is to say, what Chen Sihe said, recognizing life, expressing life and describing life in the way of folk culture; secondly, it is the attention to the process of human existence and the attention to and understanding of the specific form of existence, which is where the writer's unique thinking personality of the spirit of folk life lies, and also where the spiritual heights of the works may be reached. Since the war, writers have felt a certain kind of creative anguish precisely because this level has been forced into their own discourse system by the discourse of political power.

Chen Sihe's theory of "folk" implies full respect for human personality and creative individuality. Because "folk" is relatively free and broad, writers return to the folk, is back to the freedom, what to choose, what to express, are determined by their own unique understanding of life, and it is here that we see that this theory will have an impact on literature at the turn of the century, and even the next century of literary creation, foreshadowing the development of a tantalizing prospect of the history of literature. After entering the 1990s, faced with the loss of Enlightenment discourse and the impact of the commodity economy, writers are no longer able to express their inner spirit with the support of political ideology, and a certain degree of tacit understanding between the two has been lost as it was in the 1980s, and I am afraid that this scenario will exist for a long time. Then, the writer's creation is likely to go to the folk, or stand in the traditional intellectuals on the position to speak, but the expression of the folk state of life and folk aesthetic interest; or with the help of folk culture content, with the intellectuals of the elite consciousness to transform in order to express their own emotional world; or dissolve themselves in the folk, to the folk culture of the way to observe the life, to create