Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Traditional stories - What is the relationship between network literature and realistic modern literature?

What is the relationship between network literature and realistic modern literature?

Twenty years have passed in this century. In the past 20 years, we have used "high speed", "acceleration", "upheaval", "innovation" and "diversity" to describe the changes in the world and life. Literature has also undergone profound changes, from creative thoughts to categories, themes, styles and groups, including the relationship between literature and life, literature and readers, science and technology, media and market. How to know and understand these changes is of great significance for us to sum up the past and think about the future. Therefore, China Writers' Network specially launched a series of special topics "265438+Literature in the 20th Century" to sort out the literature in the last 20 years of this century.

We hope that this topic will be as open and inclusive as possible, and we can not only see the macro scanning and theoretical analysis of literature in the 20 years of the new century, but also see the phenomenon or event combing in the form of "keywords"; It not only describes the literary scene as a whole, but also goes deep into the specific research field; We can not only get a glimpse of the generation, change and establishment of the internal quality of literary works in the past 20 years, but also distinguish the interaction between external factors such as cultural thoughts and market media and literature. It not only combs itself, but also observes others, extending from China contemporary literature to overseas Chinese literature and world literature, showing the mutual influence and similarities and differences between world literature in the era of accelerated globalization.

In the sense of literary history, it may be a little short to look at the literature of 20 years, and it is difficult to draw conclusions and positions, but these timely summaries are very necessary in the process of literary progress, which is to review the past and point to the future. (The topic "265438+20 Years of 20th Century Literature" planned by China Writers Network has been launched one after another, so please pay attention. )

"265438+20 years of 20th century literature" series 5;

What have we "learned" from online novels?

Text | Fang Wei

After more than 20 years of development, online literature has become an important literary phenomenon in contemporary China. It has a large number of readers, extensive reading, strong capital absorption and cultural industry transformation ability. The media conversion of electronic reading makes online texts cheaper, faster to produce, and faster to spread and communicate than traditional literature. Network literature has absorbed foreign literary elements, strengthened the connection among China's popular literary tradition, classical tradition and new literary tradition, and also formed an explosion of imagination and knowledge energy for present life, thus making the network text surprisingly expanded in capacity and broad in time and space. In contrast, it is the artistic exploration of network literature, which absorbs various nutrients from popular literature, elite literature and post-modern culture and forms the existence of a million-word "super text". It can be said that online literature has had a great impact on elite literature and the literary publishing industry behind it, and has also formed a sample for reflection and reference. So, what can we "learn" from online literature?

This is a controversial topic. According to the online literary circles, not only the classical literature in China, but also the "modern literature" since the May 4th Movement, has been named as "traditional literature". Hills lamented in On Tradition that after the Enlightenment, the reputation of "tradition" went from bad to worse. This kind of thinking that is constantly divided by "tradition/innovation" actually comes from modern literature. "Click volume", "subscription volume" and capital conversion rate seem to be the highest standards to measure the value of online texts; On the other hand, in the field of elite literature, it is rare to treat online literature with an equal and inclusive attitude, explore the cultural factors and social significance behind the novel, and study and learn from its advantages. We often see the judgment that "99% of online articles are rubbish". Even scholars in the field of network research think that network literature and pure literature can "complement each other's needs" and are also "non-mainstream". Many scholars follow the definition of network industry and emphasize their own "media particularity", which undoubtedly deepens this gap.

Why should pure literature creation "draw lessons from" network literature?

Fan Boqun believes that China's modern literature should be in a state of "one body and two wings", and the May 4th new literature and popular literature become the "spreading wings" of mutual checks and balances. The experience in the history of literature proves that the absorption and transformation of popular literature forms is also a necessary resource for the development of elite literature. For example, Shi Kraffszky pointed out that Chekhov transformed the "inferior stories" of funny newspapers into "works with perfect forms" with artistic originality. Bakhtin believes that Dostoevsky's polyphonic novels benefit from the unattractive tradition of European thrillers. In Qian Zhongshu's Fortress Besieged, we can see the influence of "vagrant novel". Jia Pingwa's "Wasted Capital" uses narrow and evil novels, and "Lin Yuan" imitates heroic legends, which are obvious examples. From the development track, the development of literature will experience the "literati" of folk literature, that is, the process of elegance, such as Tang and Song Ci, Yuan Qu and other genres. The same is true of novels. In the modern transformation of literature, the length and content of novels are not only conducive to profit, but also conducive to "simulating" the way of life experience, including various complex ideologies. China's modern novels, on the basis of accepting western literary ideas, have realized the elegance of novels. The difference is that this kind of elegance and vulgarity is divorced from the tradition of China's ancient novels. Chen Pingyuan believes that the appearance of the May 4th modern novel is the "resultant force" of the transplantation of western literature and art and the displacement of novel status from low to high. Modern novels mainly inherit the "elegant culture", that is, the tradition of historical biography and the tradition of poetry and Sao. Structurally, it is "reactionary" with the "China novel tradition" from the Six Dynasties, Tang legends, Song and Yuan novels to Zhang Hui novels in Ming and Qing Dynasties. This is also one of the structural factors of the novel Elegant and Popular Points after the May 4th Movement. Before the May 4th Movement, although people constantly advocated the status of novels, novels were still "chin beauties". After the May 4th Movement, the new literature seized the right of invention and definition of vernacular Chinese, and pushed the tradition of China's ancient novels to the status of "popular literature" through various means such as literature history and literature education. For example, the May 4th writers' criticism of Yuanyang Butterfly School novels and shady novels in the late Qing Dynasty led to the separation of elegance and vulgarity in the "modern sense".

However, this "breaking tradition" also caused the "congenital deficiency" of China's modern novels, that is, it failed to form a benign inheritance with the literary tradition. The change of "confrontation between elegance and vulgarity" was the rise of May 4th literature in the early years of the Republic of China, followed by the infiltration of elegance and vulgarity represented by Zhao Shuli and Zhang Henshui in the 1940s, and the rise of popular literature in Hong Kong and Taiwan in the 1970s. As far as the mainland is concerned, the latest change in elegance and vulgarity occurred after the mid-1990s and at the beginning of the 20th century. Popular literature wins development vitality with market attributes, although it sometimes appears as "pure literature". "Youth literature" and "body writing" of post-80s women have strong literary temperament. At the end of 1990s, the literary form produced by online media developed from BBS, a China student in North America, to two literary communities, Banyan Tree and Tianya, and then to the appearance of the starting point charging model. From the establishment of Shanda Literature to the listing of Yuewen Group, the new media set off the development of popular literature, and also well connected with the "China novel tradition". The content and cultural thinking of novel types such as crossing, fantasy, tomb-robbing, paranormal and flood, or the narrative structure of "quasi-chapter-returning" and "net-text updating" all have the shadow of China's novel tradition, flashing the strangeness of Pu Songling's style, the dreamland creation of returning pearls to the main building, the magnificent legend of sealing gods, the historical and tactical design of the Three Kingdoms style and the description of the dark bottom of the water margin style. The link between net text and Chinese popular literature tradition also provides reference value for running all the way to catch up with the pure literary circle of western literature.

So, what can pure literature writers "learn" from online novels?

First of all, the novel's "appreciation of knowledge function" in the context of network new media is one of the inspirations from the net text. The popularity of novels is related to the development of modern printing industry and the improvement of enlightenment literacy rate. Lyotard thinks about knowledge narration in post-modern situation, which refers to a branch of modern grand narrative thinking. In the era of industrial revolution, knowledge exploded, and various disciplines such as astronomy, geography, ocean, biology, physics, chemistry, psychology, finance and politics flourished, which also affected the knowledge capacity of novels. The novel transcends the legends of the Romans in the Middle Ages and is no longer entangled in mysterious legends and religious secrets. It is to form enlightened and progressive thinking in both "internal" and "external" aspects. The imagination of colonial wealth and the stimulation of adventure are endowed with modernity. 18, 19 th century realistic novels, especially the description of external knowledge. For example, Flaubert and Balzac's meticulous and realistic Paris Society. As far as immanence is concerned, novels after the twentieth century have gone further, stream-of-consciousness novels have risen, and literature's exploration of psychology, dreams and fantasies has shaped many complex characters and diverse narrative forms. Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Gunter grass and other masters are all committed to combining external knowledge with internal experience. Kafka, Schultz and other modernist avant-garde writers have been extremely nervous about the division and opposition inside and outside, which has also led to the spatialization of novels. This tendency, in turn, strengthens the demand for real experience in literature, and even produces Carver's low-vocabulary "blue-collar minimalism" writing. Benjamin saw the crisis of devaluation of "experience" in Storyteller. After the First World War, people no longer cared about the outside world, and moved towards the opposition and division between the inner world and the world. Modernism moves towards inner fantasy, reflects the absurdity and unknowability of the world, and is obsessed with language and narrative experiments.

This tendency has developed to the post-modernism of "collage and miscellaneous", which has also led to the shrinkage of "literary type". Typology even belongs to the standard of popular literature. The development of "literary type" is not only the change of stylistic consciousness, but also the ability of literature to reflect the "knowledge change" in real society. Ye Luo's Shuo Wen Jie Zi divides classical novels into eight categories in the opening chapter of the novel, which shows the social knowledge and cultural imagination of ancient China people. The late Qing Dynasty was a period of great literature explosion in China. Liang Qichao talked about the types of "new novels", which are divided into history, politics, philosophy, military, adventure, detective, love writing, strange language and society. This shows the great knowledge change from tradition to modernity in the late Qing society. For example, love novels are transformed from classical love writing and related to personality enlightenment; Military novels are developed from historical military novels such as Tieqi and Sanfen, which have modern significance. Adventure novels are related to overseas colonization; Science fiction is related to modern scientific knowledge; Detective novels show modern complex interpersonal relationships and scientific thinking of logical reasoning.

Relatively speaking, modernism no longer cares about the development of external knowledge, and thinks it is an "outdated" realistic attitude. The decline of modern western elite literature types is largely due to the isolation and occlusion of "internal demands" and "external knowledge cognition". 2 1 century With the development of the Internet, there has been a "knowledge explosion" in the new century, especially in the fields of astronomy, biology, science and technology, finance and communication. However, the types of China's elite literature are becoming more and more limited. The knowledge form of "village-city" formed in China's literary world since 1990s can no longer reflect the great changes in today's world. "Native land" and "city" are still the mainstream types of literary creation, supplemented by some avant-garde writing, while scholar novels, satirical novels, historical novels, even science fiction, thriller, finance and many other types developed from the late Qing Dynasty to the modern literary period are difficult to have "type innovation". What is even more worrying is that short stories tend to be new pioneers, while novel creation presents a strange combination of "epic" and "postmodernism". The more complicated the story, the more obscure the narrative, and the ambition of deconstruction and construction coexist. However, its readability is getting worse and worse, and its absorption of knowledge is no longer based on "style innovation" and "content innovation", but more on "device" knowledge mixing and embellishment.

At the same time, with the rise of online literature, dozens of dazzling types or sub-types such as crossing, military, fantasy, science fiction, fantasy, martial arts, building treasures, tomb raiding, industrial flow, doomsday, thriller, campus, reasoning, games, sports, commercial warfare, society, realism and so on have formed in the outbreak of knowledge types, and these narrative types have other varieties that cross and merge with each other. Behind the prosperity of types is the explosion of knowledge. This not only reflects the knowledge changes in the present society, but also shows China's "great enthusiasm" for knowledge at home and abroad. For example, Kong Ergou's Past in Northeast China, Prison Day, Buddy's Four Walls and other "new social novels" all describe riffraff; Qi Chen's Heavy Industry of Great Powers, resentful Shen Gong's account of the development of China's heavy industry, He Changzai's Vast, and Anai's No Return to the River all have admirable descriptions of the great changes in social knowledge contained in China's 40 years of reform and opening up. China's genre novels show a "new world vision" that spans the primitive society to the future society in time and five continents and seven oceans in space. The realistic description of China's ancient political system, especially the imperial examination system, and the wonderful presentation of European medieval history in Gu Xiong Conquered Heaven are breathtaking. As far as science fiction is concerned, Gaia Consciousness and Inverse Evolution in Global Evolution, which bite the dog's biological and astronomical knowledge, have well integrated science fiction with stories and characters. Tian Rui's death on Mars, and even the list of hundreds of monographs and papers on astronomy, biology and science and technology in the appendix, all show the great influence of "new knowledge" on the novel concept.

This "influence of knowledge on literature" is also reflected in the differentiation of the author's knowledge background. Most of the net authors come from finance, military, medicine, biology, manufacturing and other science and engineering majors, and few are pure liberal arts. Even liberal arts are not literature, but mostly history or social subjects. Elite literature generally continues the training mode of professional writers since the founding of New China. Among the post-50 s and post-60 s writers, there are still a lot of elite literature from non-liberal arts majors. For example, Jason, who was born in statistics, Zhu Wen, who studied electric power, Huang Fan, a writer who studied military ballistics, Wang Xiaobo, who studied commodity marketing and computer science, and Zhang Chengzhi are all ethnologists. These non-literary backgrounds enrich the knowledge content and thinking mode of pure literature writing. However, the diversity of this knowledge source has weakened among elite writers born in 1970s, 1980s and even 1990s. Even in pure literary writers who are not liberal arts students, we can see the "powerful binding force" of modernist and even postmodern literary knowledge. Many young writers are deeply immersed in modernism and avant-garde literary traditions, obsessed with obscure philosophical thinking and language experiments, insensitive to changes in external knowledge, and lack the ability and courage to "break through". This is undoubtedly worthy of our reflection.

Undeniably, the literary forms of western modernism and post-modernism are related to consumerism in the post-industrial era, and also to the relatively static intergenerational experience and regional experience, including historical experience, in western developed countries. However, this kind of modernism, which originated from the scars of war, is different from the post-modern consumption spectacle behind the static life and the "China cultural body" which is rapidly industrialized with the help of online media and globalization. The rapid development of social reality and the richness and complexity of ultra-modernity in China call for the reform of elite literature. Especially in the field of novels, most of our aesthetic tastes and knowledge concepts are influenced by novels that have been canonized since the 1990s to the new century. The lack of knowledge leads to the lack of experience and the decline of the novel's unique cognitive social function. This is undoubtedly the internal cause of the increasingly serious novel crisis. Of course, many serious writers are also trying to learn from science fiction, suspense and other types and explore new areas of expression. There are also many successful experiences, such as The King and the Lyrics and If the Doomsday is Endless by Wang October, which draw lessons from science fiction, doomsday and other types of knowledge and incorporate profound philosophical thinking. However, the total number of these works is still small.

Secondly, the "imagination" of online literature broke out. The development of this imagination is not only manifested in the ability to fictionalize the relationship between man and himself and explore the depth of human nature, but also in the ability to fictionalize and imagine the external relationships between man and society, man and history, man and nature, and man and the universe. In the exploration of internal imagination, elite literature, especially avant-garde literature, has made amazing achievements, but the ability of external imagination, especially the conflict and reconciliation between man and the outside world and the story relationship between man and the world, is very insufficient. This is also reflected in the degradation of the plot ability of elite literature. The ability of plot construction is the basic skill of the novel, and it is also the writer's imaginative construction of the world. There are many branches in China that downplay the plot, such as prose novels, poetic novels and philosophical novels. However, under the thinking of modernism and postmodernism, many writers are more keen on language experiments and metaphorical poetics because they deliberately avoid the realistic creation rules of typical characters, typical environments and typical events. However, in excellent modernist and even post-modernist works, we can still see the importance of constructing plots and carefully conceiving details for a writer. There are unforgettable plots and details in the works of modernist writers who are good at short stories, such as Carver, McEwan, Yates and angela carter. Kafka's Metamorphosis shows normal human nature in the "strange feeling" of beetle hallucination, the strange ghost invasion in Cortaza's Occupied House, and the fate entanglement between Pessoa and fictional characters in Saramago's The Year Ricardo Reyes Died all show the great potential of this ancient narrative tradition. In other words, plot ability also reflects the writer's ability to observe society, understand the depth of human nature and imagine the world. False and pale plots and mediocre plots are all manifestations of the writer's lack of social experience and imagination.

Network literature pursues the capital derived from the text, and the ability of plot imagination is very important. Many excellent online articles do not simply pursue plot stimulation, but absorb some pure literary experience in narrative perspective, narrative voice, narrative space-time structure and so on, creating a very rich, realistic and colorful novel world. The angel Oscar's Song Shi Gui develops the plot mode of modern historical novels, and inherits the popular novel tradition of storytellers such as Wang Shaotang and Chen Shihe who maintain narrative time with "huge plot" since the late Qing Dynasty. It has a full climax narrative mode of "no trough", and the beginning of the novel is crisis, and there are constant crisis conflicts to shape typical characters and historical situations. The screenwriter has also developed a kind of "super plot", that is, around the core events, combined with multiple narrative angles, all-round grand scene description, reading substitution is very rich. The novel only wrote 200,000 words about the "Bianliang" incident, but it was brilliant and fascinating. The Romance of the Dragon and the Snake is the representative work of the new martial arts school, and its plot construction ability is also very outstanding. It combines the traditions of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism and the theory of human nature, combines the research of modern medicine and martial arts skills, and changes the tradition of literati's new martial arts initiated by Jinwen. Its plot characteristics are "there is something strange in the strange", "writing the right with the strange", realistic and spicy, including reasonable imagination of human body function. In the retro tradition of martial arts in the late Qing Dynasty, combined with the understanding of modern self, an unforgettable plot was created. Stories such as Jing Guan's The Immortal Story, The Boiling of Animal Blood and Lu Banchi's The Shroud of Green Capsule all have superb plot construction. As a pure literary creation that deeply explores human nature and thinks about social culture, it cannot simply restore the state of "plot-centered". However, the improvement of the plot construction ability of online literature is also worthy of reflection and reference in pure literature creation. The re-creation of plot ability can make us reflect on "almost nothing" and focus on the absurd and common modern literary tradition, thus promoting our understanding of the modern subjectivity of "China Story".

Finally, learning from online literature does not mean denying the existence value and development space of pure literature. There is a clear difference between pure literary creation and online writing. "The opposition between elegance and vulgarity" is a "structural existence" inevitably caused by the separation of ideological function and commodity function of modern social literature. Compared with online literature, pure literature is easier to be canonized, and its symbolic authoritative value of "beautiful classics" is an incomparable spiritual pattern of online literature, and it also has an authoritative academic interpretation position in the history of literature. The exquisite sense of language, exquisite artistic conception, exquisite and vivid description, multi-level and three-dimensional aesthetic implication and ideological content make it transcend the limitation of time and space, strengthen human's ability to know society and reflect life, provide positive spiritual nourishment and realm promotion, shape national imagination and shape good modern personality. In contrast, although many popular literature can appreciate elegance and vulgarity, and even turn vulgarity into elegance, in the cultural structure of modern society, the process from vulgarity to elegance and from vulgarity to classics is still very difficult.

In fact, many net articles also draw lessons from pure literature. In the investigation of online literature, the author once asked the topic "which pure literary works have the deepest influence on online literature". Many net writers choose Yu Hua's Alive, Xu Sanguan's Selling Blood and Lu Yao's Ordinary World. These classic novels not only have profound ideological content, but also have a relatively "communicative and friendly singing style" writing mode in artistic characteristics. For example, in Living and Xu Sanguan Selling Blood, Yu Hua gave up the narrative maze techniques such as the vacancy and delay of avant-garde literature and the change of narrative time sequence, and focused on the transformation of narrative frequency. His "repetitive" narrative techniques, such as the repeated death in Living, the repeated blood selling plot in Xu Sanguan's Blood Selling Story and the "repetitive" narrative voice, are in line with China people's aesthetic psychology of "repetitive narration", such as Visiting the Caotang and Monkey King Thrice Defeats the Skeleton Demon. The most touching feature of Lu Yao's novels lies in the narrative mode of "personal struggle at the bottom". Full of idealistic romantic sadness and tragic frustration, it also forms effective psychological stimulation and reflection on reality. This "bottom struggle" story also appears in the current pure literary creation, but there is little sincere moral attitude and ethical courage to "confirm the modern self", but it exaggerates the trivial resolution of the grand narrative by the little people. In online texts, the story of "personal struggle at the bottom" is often given the symbol of "personal fable" and transformed into the psychological formula of "faggots fighting back", such as the sub-type of "Fat Husband". At the same time, it also provides an internal psychological mechanism for "network realism". For example, novels such as "The River Never Returning" and "Condor" all have stories of "the struggle of little people". This is also in line with the special psychology of ordinary people, especially young people, in the case of class differentiation.

Any art category, if it wants to innovate constantly, must have the tolerance and mind of "all rivers run into the sea". Vertically, pure literature should actively inherit China's cultural tradition, especially the tradition of popular novels; In terms of reference, pure literature should pay attention to the changes of online novels in the context of new media. No matter the writing form or content, the changes of online literature can be absorbed into the reflection of the development of pure literature. For example, the scientific imagination of the future on the theme of network literature and science fiction; The development of online literature to China storyteller tradition can be used to reflect on the "readability problem" of pure literature; The rich types of online literature can also improve the spread of novels. From the "new novel" advocated by Liang Qichao in the late Qing Dynasty, to the May 4th novel, and then to the novel in the new period, learning from the West has always been the "top priority" of pure literary creation, regardless of ideological trends, artistic techniques and creative thinking. Undeniably, western literary thoughts are indispensable nourishment for China literature to enter the new century. Today, when China is constantly exploring the road to modernity and showing successful experiences, it is not enough to start from western art alone. The "elite consciousness" also leads many pure literature writers to excessively pursue the "scarcity" of field significance and constantly demand the difficulty of writing, style and narration. Some writers write the spiritual history of their hometown with millions of words of "the length of river novels", but they are stuck in the chaotic and collaged scenery, and even can't form effective metaphors at all. Another kind of "reverse pioneer" tends to write with blank narrative and meaning, pulling time out of what reality refers to and becoming a pioneer writing of "disguised realism". These "quasi-reality" and "quasi-metaphor" new avant-garde writing will deepen the "reading isolation" between pure literature and the public, lead to a large number of readers' loss, and also cause their own closure and shrinkage.

Of course, the online text is still in the process of development, and many characteristics and laws need to be deeply studied by scholars and effectively analyzed by pure literary writers. There are also many problems in "network literature", which deserves vigilance and reflection. For example, the network literature text strengthens the plot ability of the novel, and also causes the circular narrative of "upgrading the strange" and the rough and chaotic "aesthetic weakening" of the novel language. The neglect of realistic factors and the excessive pursuit of gameplay in online literature also lead to the lack of deep aesthetic and ideological implications and the lack of "classic significance" of repeated reading. Network literature must learn from the classic quality of pure literature and move towards its own classics. Therefore, Professor Fan Boqun's "one body and two wings" is a benign pattern of modern literature in China, which can be truly realized.

This article was first published on July 2, 20201China Writers Network.

▽ "265438+Literature in the 20th Century" series;

Mu Hongyan | 265438+Iranian Literature in the 20th Century: Pluralistic Presentation Driven by Literature Prize

Chen Xin century foreign literature and its research focus

Meng Fanhua | 20 years of novelettes: new experience and new space of literature

Huo Mingjun | 265438+Memo or Observation Notes of 20th Century Poetry: Looking Up and Forgetting

Wechat Editor | Keyra Liu

Report/feedback

Hot list today

Sui Zhenhua, director of Qingdao Municipal Health and Wellness Committee, was suspended.

The police responded that the party secretary of Chengdu University was suspected of losing contact.

three

Trump 14-year-old son was infected with COVID-19 virus.

four

Couples with the same name got married after 90.

five

Lang Lang announced that his wife Gina was pregnant.

Open Baidu APP to see more popular lists.

Everyone is looking for it.

10 novels worth reading 10 times.

Doctor, help.

I can't extricate myself from watching the full version

12 this classic novel is enough to seal the gods.

She is gentle and sweet.

Read stepdaughter novels for free.