Explanation of Roots Novels

Roots Searching Novel: A novel that reflects on, examines and criticizes national culture or traditional culture and local culture, with the aim of discovering the living resources of national cultural traditions, recasting the soul of the people or the spirit of the nation, and taking part in the dialogue between Chinese literature and world literature in the context of globalization. The so-called search for roots is to seek the roots of national culture.

In the mid-1980s, there was a wave of "cultural root-seeking" in the literary world, and writers began to devote themselves to the excavation of traditional consciousness and the psychology of national culture, and their creations were called "root-seeking literature".

The emergence of root-searching literature has its own profound social and cultural background, first of all, the influence of Latin American magical realism literature. In 1982, Colombian writer Marquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his book One Hundred Years of Solitude, which gained worldwide recognition and stimulated and inspired Chinese writers.

Many young writers saw in Marquez's works, which were full of Latin American regional colors, the hope that the literature of the Third World countries would go to the world, and they tried to root their literary creations in the long and deep cultural soil of the Chinese nation, and interpret and transform the Western cultural concepts and art forms with the unique sensibility of the Chinese, so as to solve the problem of the development of the contemporary Chinese literature, such as the poverty of the spirit. The problem of spiritual poverty faced by the development of contemporary Chinese literature can thus be solved.

Between 1983 and 1984, advocates and practitioners of root-seeking literature exchanged views and held symposiums on the issue of literary "root-seeking"; at the beginning of 1984, Li Tao used the term "root-seeking" for the first time in his Creative Correspondence. "

In the summer of 1985, Han Shaogong, Li Tao, Zheng Wanlong, Zheng Yi, A Cheng, Li Hangyu, and others wrote articles advocating or promoting the idea of root-searching literature.

Han Shaogong's "The Roots of Literature" was later regarded as the manifesto of the literary roots movement, in which he said, "Literature has roots. The roots of literature should be y planted in the cultural soil of national traditions; if the roots are not deep, the leaves will not flourish." He believed that the literary "search for roots", "is a kind of re-recognition of the nation", "to reveal some of the roots that determine the development of the nation human survival".