What is the cultural significance of literature?

The cultural significance of literature has the following points.

1, the historical and traditional cultural significance of literature.

The historical and traditional cultural significance of literature is a kind of "root" relationship, that is, the continuous relationship between traditional culture and contemporary culture is a flesh-and-blood expression in literature. In this sense, we can find that culture refers to the "social inheritance" of a social group. Writers' creative activities have the same side as historians' writing: memory. However, the writer recalls in imagination. Both writers and literary readers live in historical context and historical continuity, and reconstruct a literary text with historical "collective unconsciousness", so the historical traditional cultural significance in literary works exists in a potential silent state. Literary works reflect the historical dialogue between the present and the past, so literary works are both present, historical and even future. Great poet t? s？ Eliot made an incisive exposition in the article Tradition and Personal Talent:

The sense of history contains an understanding, not only aware of the past, but also aware of the past and present. The sense of history not only drives people to write in the background of his generation, but also makes him feel that the whole European literature from Homer and the whole literature of his country exist at the same time, forming a simultaneous sequence. This sense of history is an understanding of eternity, time and the integration of eternity and time. It is this sense of history that makes writers traditional. At the same time, it also made him keenly aware of his position in time and his relationship with the contemporary era. Ritchter, edited by d.h. ,? Criticize tradition? , new york: Saint Martin, 1989, p. 467.

This involves the prototype of theme, motif, image, artistic conception, typicality, plot, style and technique. Prototype is a recurring cultural image in the history of culture and literature, which is essentially a kind of "collective unconsciousness". The reincarnation in the history of China literature.

Images of the moon, grass, running water, bamboo, butterflies, birds, fishermen, light rain, dusk, sunset, railings, etc. And happy endings, such as infatuated women's heartbreak, loyalty and filial piety, talented people and beautiful women, beating mandarin ducks with sticks, opposition between loyal ministers and traitors, and officials forcing people to rebel, are behind the narrative patterns and motifs, such as karma, reincarnation, aid, death and so on. Cheng Jincheng: On the Prototype System of China Literature, Literature Review 1996(3). Prototype image is the perceptual way of a nation's typical emotion and aesthetic concept. The historical, traditional and cultural significance of literature has been most tenaciously expressed here.

2. The regional cultural significance of literature.

Regional culture includes geographical environment, customs, regional history, regional economy, political system, lifestyle, dialect, cultural and psychological characteristics of regional people, etc. These are all manifested in literary works, which form the cultural characteristics of regional literature. Zhuang Chuo's Chicken Ribs in Song Dynasty said: "Generally speaking, human nature is like its local wind. The northwest is mountainous, so people attach importance to Houpu Road. Fuyang is full of water, and its people are smart and capable, but they suffer from shallowness. " This is also the root of China culture. Chu culture, Qin culture, Wuyue culture, Lingnan culture and Qilu culture are all different. The novels of Jia Pingwa, Zhang Chengzhi, Wang Zengqi, Han Shaogong, Li Hangyu and Zheng Wanlong all have different regional cultural connotations. Lawrence said: "Every continent has its own regional spirit. Everyone is attracted by a certain region, which is hometown and motherland. Different places on the earth radiate different vitality, different life amplitudes, different chemical gases, and different constellations radiate different magnetic forces-you can call them whatever you want. But the spirit of the region is indeed a great truth. The Nile valley not only produces grain, but also creates the great religion of Egypt. China created everything in China, and it will do so in the future. But China people in San Francisco will not be China people one day, because the United States is a melting pot and will melt them away. " Lawrence: the spirit of the earth. See Lawrence's Essays on Literature and Art, 42 pages, Guilin, Lijiang Publishing House, 1994. The core of regional cultural significance of literature lies in regional cultural spirit and regional cultural character, from which we can further investigate how this cultural spirit and character are formed.

3. The modern cultural significance of literature.

The cultural significance of modernity, as a global cultural theme originating from western civilization, has gradually formed since16th century, compared with the pre-modern, traditional and ancient modernization significance. It is a cultural significance that all mankind will pursue in the future. It shows modern significance in economic culture, political culture, life culture, artistic culture, scientific culture, urban culture, educational culture and philosophical culture, and is the cultural connotation of global dialogue. In modern literature, it shows a new expression of individual life, living world, emotional soul and perceptual aesthetics: modernity and global culture. . Although the cultural significance of modernity is a complex and undecided meaning, it has been constantly reflected in world literature since modern times. The most prominent thing is that it produces a modern consciousness with humanism as the core, and cares about people's inner pursuit (spiritual needs, personality realization, personality independence, etc.). ), broke through the single mode of social reflection and social criticism in literature, went deep into the human soul from the perspective of complex and diverse humanity, re-examined the motivation of human social behavior, and tried to publicize the greatness of human modernity. The cultural significance of modernity is fully reflected in the whole literary image. For example, Leo Oufan Lee, a China scholar living in the United States, pointed out in his book The Pursuit of Modernity that China literature has entered a modern stage, which is characterized by a sense of worrying about the country. This sense of worrying about the country is aimed at the fact that the Chinese nation is tortured by mental illness, so it cannot be angry and powerful, nor can it change its inhuman social reality. Therefore, this theme has three levels: first, China is regarded as a mentally ill nation, which has a sharp opposition to modernity, and modernity means resisting and rebelling against tradition and pursuing a new kind of knowledge; The second is the criticism of the social and political system; Third, it pays special attention to the spiritual expression of individuals, destiny and individualism. These are three concrete connotations of China's modern literature's pursuit of modern cultural significance. Leo Oufan Lee: The Pursuit of Modernity, 1 77 ~ 1 78, Shanghai Joint Publishing Company, 2000.

4. The humanistic and cultural significance of literature.

As mentioned above, literature is a study of human beings, and fundamentally speaking, the cultural significance carried by literature is a spiritual concern for people. As the cultural significance of human studies, literature is the expression and inquiry of human survival situation and destiny, the significance of human survival, the relationship between man and nature and the future of mankind. Literature as a human study is an "iconology" centered on "people". As a cultural style, the humanistic cultural significance of literature is the comprehensive embodiment of people's widest connotation, including the conflict and blending of traditional culture, regional culture and modern culture. People are bound by the superposition of various cultures, and as a round figure, they show complex personality. Lu Xun's "Blessing" shows the cultural tragedy of Xianglinsao as a person, her cultural fate that she could not survive in the feudal cultural situation, and also shows the spiritual tragedy that Xianglinsao was destroyed, including her consciousness and subconscious. At the same time, the novel also shows the cultural ecological environment that exists among all the people in Luzhen, and it is this cultural ecology that caused Xianglinsao's tragedy. The "I" in the novel is not only the object of Xianglinsao's soul torture, but also the "spectator" of the tragedy, the reflector and critic of this cultural tragedy, thus becoming a wanderer between China's feudal culture and modern culture. Between "I" and Xianglinsao and Luzhen, it embodies the profound and complex humanistic and cultural significance of literature. Existentialist literature in western modernism shows the "absurd" cultural situation in which people live in the dilemma of alienation, so it puts forward the cultural problem of free choice.

This makes the novel have philosophical and cultural implications. China's ancient pastoral poems not only expressed dissatisfaction with feudal autocratic rule, but also showed people's affinity for nature and the cultural significance of pursuing the ideal of swimming. Understanding the significance of literary images from the perspective of humanistic spirit will get a deeper understanding. The primitive people's feelings, folkways and folk customs in western Hunan, which are expressed in Shen Congwen's novels, exist as an ideal of human beauty and human beauty. His poetic description of cave life, hunting animals to satisfy hunger, love of songs, contempt for money, primitive wild love and unrestrained life exists as a mockery of modern urban civilization. In Shen Congwen's profound cultural consciousness, the primitive folk customs left by primitive people seem to be more suitable for the survival of modern people. This orientation choice of humanistic spirit is related to cultural ideals and concepts and cannot be simply understood. From a purely sociological and political point of view, many literary works will lose their value of existence. From the cultural significance of human studies, we can see that literature is very persistent in asking the meaning of human existence: why do people live? What is happiness? What is misfortune? what is love ? What are kinship, friendship, nostalgia, patriotism and national feelings? What is human responsibility and humanitarianism? All literary works have vivid expressions.

Literature has other cultural meanings, mainly the above four. Literature is an aesthetic ideology, which carries comprehensive, extensive, rich and complex cultural significance. Looking at literature from the widest angle of culture and focusing on the culture of spiritual form is the richest and most profound significance of pursuing literature and sublimating literature to a higher level. When we examine the cultural and psychological state, values, ways of thinking, aesthetic taste, moral sentiment, religious feelings and national character behind literature, we can enhance and expand our understanding of the functions of literature, and human beings can discover many new things from literature, so that literature has eternal value. Why are Lu Xun's works at the peak of China literature? Because his works are the anatomy and cultural reflection of China people, the cultural repentance of the whole nation, the criticism of traditional culture and the call for modern culture. Lu Xun's works, like A Dream of Red Mansions, have the "cultural consciousness of repentance" that China's traditional literature lacks. The cultural consciousness of confession is a confession of one's own human defects and social ills, and it is also a tragic consciousness. It is precisely because of the emergence of A Dream of Red Mansions and Lu Xun that China's modern literature has reached a new height of pursuit. From the perspective of literary criticism, cultural criticism of literature has made the understanding of literature gain new breadth, strength and depth. China Novels and Culture in the 20th Century by Yang Yi looks at China's novels in the 20th century from 15 cultural perspectives, such as cultural awareness, cultural choice, cultural reasons, cultural depth, cultural connotation, cultural orientation, cultural opportunities, cultural psychological quality, comparison of cultural types, cultural differences, cultural feelings, urban cultural awareness, cultural attribution, cultural character and cultural psychological adjustment, and rewrites a novel.