Since 1930s and 1940s, Xiao Hong's research can be roughly divided into three stages. The first is the establishment period (1935- 1942). Lu Xun and Hu Feng's classic evaluation of the field of life and death opened the study of Xiao Hong. Second, the memory period (1942-around the end of the Cultural Revolution), during which articles were mostly mourning articles, expressing friends' perceptual impressions of Xiao Hong and her works. Mao Dun's Introduction to Hulan River, Luo's Biography of Xiao Hong, Xu Guangping's Memories of Xiao Hong and Xiao Hong's Memories, and Nie Gannu's In Peace. Mao Dun's evaluation of Xiao Hong's later creation lagging behind the great era represents the voice of mainstream critical discourse in that period. Third, the development period (new period to the present). Since the new period, the study of Xiao Hong has once formed a craze and developed in depth, mainly in the following six aspects: 1. Research on Xiao Hong's life, life experience and emotional experience: 2. The research on Xiao Hong's works, especially some of her later works, has also attracted extensive attention and research; 3. Research on Xiao Hong's other novels, essays and poems: 4. Diversified research angles, such as taking care of Xiao Hong from a comparative perspective and studying Xiao Hong from a feminist perspective; 5. The origin of Xiao Hong's creation: 6. Research on Xiao Hong's unique aesthetic style and artistic pursuit. To some extent, it promoted the development of Xiao Hong's research.
Before the new period, except for the authoritative evaluation of Lu Xun and Mao Dun, Xiao Hong's research was not fruitful. This paper mainly focuses on the study of Xiao Hong since the new period, focusing on the following six aspects to sort out the study of Xiao Hong, trying to find out the problems existing in the study of Xiao Hong and seek new breakthroughs.
First, study Xiao Hong's life, life experience and emotional experience.
Xiao Hong's personal complex life experience and legendary experience have attracted the attention of researchers at the beginning of the new period. At that time, many researchers devoted themselves to the textual research of Xiao Hong's life experience, wrote many memoirs, and many biographies of Xiao Hong came out one after another. For example, The Story of Xiao Hong by Ge Haowen (Northern Literature and Art Publishing House, 1985 edition), The Story of Xiao Hong by Ryu Nakamura (Harbin Publishing House,1September 993) and The Story of Xiao Hong by Xiao Feng (Baihua Literature and Art Publishing House, 1980 650). Published in February 198 1), Falling Red and Xiaoxiao by Liu Huixin (Sichuan Literature and Art Publishing House, 1983 edition), and Xiao Hong (Harbin Publishing House,19/kloc-0 Published in June, 199 1), The Biography of Xiao Hong by Tie Feng (published by Northern Literature and Art Publishing House in August, 1993), The Wandering Life of Xiao Hong by Wang Xiaoni (published by Changchun Publishing House in May, 1995). These are very important for us to better enter Xiao Hong's literary world. There are many controversial issues about Xiao Hong's life and experience, such as Xiao Hong's Notes on Letters published by 19865438 (Heilongjiang People's Publishing House, 1 year, 1 month edition), which says that he (Zhang Xiuke) is not his father now. After investigation, Xiaohong was identified as Zhang's own daughter. In March 2004, Sun Maoshan's latest research anthology "Xiao Hong's Life History" was officially published by Harbin Publishing House, and the dispute between "having a daughter" and "adopting a daughter" came to an end.
Clarifying some mysteries about the writer's life experience and life path is helpful for us to better understand the writer and enter the work, but it seems inappropriate to dwell too much on some irrelevant details and spend too much energy. Moreover, on some issues, because the parties are alive and have different views, many simple things will be complicated, which should attract the attention of researchers. As a researcher said, "the key to the problem is not the truth, but the influence of what happened on Xiao Hong's creation".
Second, the study of Xiao Hong's works.
As a real researcher, it is Xiao Hong's works (in Lu Xun's words) that show the power of northerners to "live for life and fight for death" with "meticulous observation and deviant brushwork" and attract their attention. Due to the preface and postscript of Lu Xun and Hu Feng, The Field of Life and Death was accepted by the Shanghai literary world as soon as it came out, and Xiao Hong became famous overnight. And this preface and postscript set up an authoritative evaluation for Life and Death Field from the beginning, which has influenced it to this day. In the past, researchers generally defined the field of life and death as "anti-Japanese literature", but since the new period, many researchers have discovered the neglected connotation and put forward different opinions from a new angle. For example, Xing Fujun and Lu Wencai's "Rural Literature of Peasants' Struggle against Fate-Re-evaluating the Field of Life and Death" (No.1982,No. 1) pointed out that this work is actually set in War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the theme of peasants' struggle against fate. Some scholars also think that the field of life and death can not be explained by a single antecedent theme, but should be based on the writer's thinking about the fate of human life and death, and many unexplained or far-fetched problems can be solved (Huang Xiaotao's "It's a long story-the multi-layered meaning of the field of life and death and the multi-dimensional structure of China's modern cultural thought", the third issue of Modern Literature Research Series +0990). Liu He's Text, Criticism and National Literature discusses the relationship between China's modern literary criticism practice and national literature, taking Xiao Hong's novel Life and Death Field as an example, and points out "Xiao Hong's confrontation with national discourse in the novel space" [1] from the production level and the reception level, which puts forward a new angle for us to study Xiao Hong. However, Moro's Life and Death Field and Xiao Hong's Literary Contribution (Social Science Forum,No. 10, 2003) think that Life and Death Field is not mainly about the war of resistance, and two-thirds of its content has nothing to do with the war of resistance ... In short, it is a sketch about the birth, aging, illness and death of the people, which embodies Xiao Hong's deepest.
Since the new era, many comments have tried to get rid of the old authoritative framework in Xiao Hong's research and try to approach the writer himself in all directions, which is a gratifying phenomenon. In the mid-1930s, Xiao Hong was caught by this trend, and the voice of "resisting Japan and saving the country" was very high. Besides, Xiao Hong is a patriotic and enthusiastic young man, so it is natural to write anti-Japanese in her first novel. However, due to her personal experience and academic education, she can't describe the Anti-Japanese War deeply and directly, so there are a lot of descriptions of peasant hooligans in the text, but not many descriptions of the anti-Japanese theme. It can be said that Xiao Hong's "life and death field" was unconsciously marginalized at that time. Because of the times, it is understandable to define it as "anti-Japanese literature", but our research today should go deeper into the text itself and restore the original theme and ideological content of the work.
All Xiao Hong's creations since Life and Death Field are quite different from the requirements of the times. 1940 Xiao Hong finishes the novel Biography of Hulan River. "When Xiao Hong wrote Biography of Hulan River, most other writers in China were writing wartime literature, essays and drama reports, or writing anti-Japanese novels and publicity short films" [2]. For Xiao Hong at that time, the first thing to face was criticism from critics. The most influential comment in the 1940s was undoubtedly Mao Dun's preface to Biography of Hulan River: "It is a narrative poem, a colorful landscape painting and a string of sad ballads" [3]. This, like Lu Xun's "fortitude in life" and "struggle in death", has become a famous sentence to comment on Xiao Hong's works. However, after a limited artistic affirmation, Mao Dun, as a representative writer and authoritative critic of realistic creation, thinks that Xiao Hong, a writer who rose to the literary world with a field of life and death, is "in such a big era around 1940" and "recalls this lonely town" with depressed and lonely feelings. Because in Xiao Hong's novels, "we can't see feudal exploitation and oppression, nor can we see the bloody aggression of Japanese imperialism." This denies the biography of Hulan River ideologically. In the context at that time, the evaluation of Mao Dun was more negative than positive, which directly led to the low-key treatment of Hulan River Biography by critics in the following decades.
Since the new era, with the upsurge of research on Xiao Hong, Xiao Hong's later works have attracted much attention, and there was a debate about Xiao Hong's later creative thoughts in the early 1980s. In Xiao Hong's Road to Literature, Tie Feng thinks: "The biggest shortcoming of Biography of Hulan River is that the author's creative thinking during the Anti-Japanese War was biased, which denied the class nature of literary works and exposed the critical brush strokes of' opposing human ignorance', thus exaggerating the ignorance and insensitivity of the working people, failing to write positive characters, reflecting the fundamental characteristics of the times and showing the ignorance of the people during the Anti-Japanese War. This greatly weakened the political thought and educational significance of the work. " [4] However, most scholars hold a positive attitude towards Xiao Hong's later creative thoughts. My Opinions on the Biography of Hulan River (No.4, Literature Review 1982) in Korea holds that the Biography of Hulan River is a deepening of the understanding and ideal of life after the Field of Life and Death. She pointed out the profound ideological content of Hulan River Biography earlier, and thought it was not a retrogression in ideological creation. In Xiao Hong Phenomenon —— Some Puzzles of China's Modern Cultural Thought (Tianjin People's Publishing House, 199 1), Huang Xiaotao thinks that the Biography of Hulan River meets the aesthetic requirements of the times as a whole, and also finds a new opportunity for the development of the theme of "national character", the symbol of Xiao Hong's maturity. In addition, Liu Naiqiao and Wang Yaru believe that "Cong Xiaohong" writers do not belong to a certain class, but to people. Whether now or in the past, the starting point of writers' writing is ignorance of people (1put forward at the third symposium on literature and art in April, 938), and we have also seen the gradual improvement and deepening of Xiao Hong's creative thinking. Her creative focus is not limited to encouraging, inspiring and praising the national anti-Japanese war consciousness, but goes deep into the root of national awakening and struggle-national character, which is consistent with Mr. Lu Xun's creative thinking.
Xiao Hong's later novel Ma Bole has been neglected and seldom studied. It is generally believed that Ma Bole is a loser, while Ma Bole, the hero, is a selfish escapist. However, in Comment on the Image of Ma Bole (Journal of Suihua Teachers College, No.2, 199 1), Li Zhonghua thinks that Ma Bole is a complicated new image, and he tends to make progress. This view is very novel. Qin's "On Xiao Hong's Creative Path-Starting from the Theme" (Journal of Beijing Normal University, No.4, 1990) holds that it is the continuation of Xiao Hong's "transforming national morbid thought" and inherits Lu Xun's literary view. In addition, in her doctoral thesis "A Banana in the Snow-On Xiao Hong's Creation" (Central Compilation and Publishing House, 2003 edition), Huang Xiaojuan also thought that Xiao Hong's "Ma Bole" was a morbid national character that was almost forgotten in her works at that time.