On Zhang Henshui's Contribution to Modern Popular Fiction Art Theory

abstract

On the whole, Zhang Henshui's modern popular novel theory is practical, that is, empirical, that is, on the basis of popular novel creation, some theoretical viewpoints are formed by summing up and upgrading experience, which can further deepen his novel creation. His contributions to the theory of modern popular novels are as follows: (1) he established the style view of modern popular novels in his reflection on the May 4th new literature; In the evolution of creative practice, establish the artistic view of modern popular novels; In the pursuit of the spirit of the times, develop the functional view of modern popular novels. In the double variation of "interest" and "times", he achieved theoretical development and creative breakthrough, and completed the approach and turn from vulgarity to elegance to the mainstream ideology of new literature.

As a master of modern popular novels, Zhang Henshui not only left more than 120 novellas for China literary world, but also left a considerable number of novel theories. When people evaluate Zhang Henshui, they mostly pay attention to his literary creation, but pay little attention to his literary thoughts, especially his novel theory. In fact, Zhang Henshui is not only a modern popular novelist, but also a modern popular novel theorist. Zhang Henshui said that he had intended to write an Outline of the History of China's Novels, but later he wanted to change it to A New Examination of China's Novels. Although this systematic novel theory work has not been published, in the preface he wrote for his own works, he recalled his writing career, talked about novels, talked about novels and short stories, how to start short stories, my novel course and my novel writing road. Generally speaking, his modern popular novel theory belongs to the practical type, that is, the empirical type, that is, on the basis of popular novel creation, some theoretical viewpoints are formed by summing up and upgrading experience, which can further deepen his novel creation and form the interactive relationship between Zhang Henshui's novel creation and theory, which not only develops Zhang Henshui, but also affects a generation of popular novel theory and creation. This paper intends to discuss Zhang Henshui's contribution to modern popular novel theory from three aspects: style view, art view and function view.

one

Zhang Henshui took the road of popular novel creation, and most of them used Zhang Hui-style novels. He has a special liking for Zhang Hui's novels, so he makes a deep discussion on the essence of Zhang Hui's novels and how to transform the old ones. According to the development history of modern literature, we can see that Zhang Henshui insisted on the creation of Zhang Hui-style novels and established the style view of popular novels in the process of reflecting on the May 4th new literature, the dispute between elegance and vulgarity and the confrontation between the old and the new. When the May 4th New Literature Movement set off a huge wave and attacked the old literature with an anti-traditional face, Zhang Henshui wandered in the old literature circle, stuck to the traditional chapter, and published novels "True and False Baoyu" and "Novel Wandering in Hell", which aroused people's dissatisfaction. As he himself said, "During the May 4th Movement, several close friends took advantage of me. However, Zhang Henshui did not "rewrite the new style", which made him "different". Because the "May 4th" literary revolution clearly put forward "opposing classical Chinese and advocating vernacular Chinese; Oppose old literature and advocate new literature. " Advocates of literary revolution and writers of new literature only criticized old literature for the second time from1919-1921. At that time, criticizing old literature was to establish the exclusive position of new literature. However, in the "opposition" and "criticism" of "opposing the old literature", people have formed a dual mode of thinking, that is, the new is the old, and all creations and ideas based on western culture are "new" and revolutionary, while those different from it and close to the "tradition" are "old" and serve as chapters of the old form. In fact, they don't realize that old bottles can also hold new wine, and the transformation of old forms can be fully utilized by the new era. Zhang Henshui affirmed and agreed with the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal spirit of the May 4th New Culture Movement, but he was dissatisfied with the "anti-tradition" of the May 4th New Literature Movement, especially the criticism of old literature, and even the sweeping of chapter by chapter. Zhang Henshui insisted on writing novels with chapters. After the publication of History of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Ming Dynasty, it "slightly attracted the attention of emerging writers and artists. The publication of karma for crying and laughing is simply regarded as a miracle. Everyone has such a feeling that Zhang Hui's novel was thrown into the toilet. Is it possible to come out like this? At this time, some seniors thought that I had a reactionary effect on the cultural movement. It is necessary for the young people to sweep away the smelly grass in this flower bed, but I still haven't deepened the argument. In 1930s, Zhang Henshui's Zhang Hui novels reached the peak of art, but the new writers still adhered to the dual thinking mode of "new", "old", "advanced" and "backward", and regarded Zhang Henshui's novels as "old-school novels" and "smelly grass" in the literary garden, thus "encirclement and suppression" him. Zhang Henshui himself had a clear understanding of this point. Although Zhang Henshui was besieged by the new school of literature, he did not retreat from the position of popular novels. He adopted the strategy of "not deepening the debate", insisted on his own creative personality and continued to create Zhang Hui-style popular novels. At the same time, he also emphasized the artistic value of Zhang Hui's style in theory. In Overall Appreciation, he said, "I don't think all Zhang Hui's novels can be discarded. Otherwise, how can The Red Chamber and The Water Margin be world-famous? Naturally, Zhang Hui's novels have their shortcomings, but these shortcomings are not irreparable (I am definitely not the one who saved them); Although all the new novels are very advanced, the grammar is well organized, which is acceptable to ordinary people who are not used to reading China and speaking Chinese. Just like Sun Ya's poems, ordinary women are puzzled by their height, beauty and beauty. We have no reason to abandon this group of people, nor can we force words from western grammar organizations into their heads. I am willing to work for this group of people. " He saw the advantages and disadvantages of Zhang Hui's novels, and also saw the Europeanization brought by the adoption of French and Western styles in the new novels. This Europeanization trend makes

Ordinary people can't accept it, so he wants to shorten the distance between new literature and ordinary people and is willing to serve them. This is the problem of "service object" emphasized by his popular novel view. How to serve ordinary people, Zhang Henshui thinks it is necessary to transform Zhang Huiti, and his creative practice has done a series of work for transforming Zhang Huiti. He said: "Some people say that the novels of China's Lao Zhanghui are voluminous enough for this class to appreciate. Why don't you go there again? But there are two problems: the vast amount of things is not a reflection of modernity, and those people need novels about modern things. Where can they get them? If everyone despises Zhang Hui's novels and doesn't do them, it seems that the person who holds the pen will be responsible, so that this class can always see the story of a chivalrous man spitting white light, a talented person winning the first prize and a beautiful woman booking a lifelong garden privately. I don't want to talk big, I can take this responsibility ... and the old novels can be improved, so I might as well try. " Here, it is proposed to transform the old chapter-and-chapter style with modern consciousness to provide "modern things" for his client, thus stepping out of a new road of improvement between "new novel" and "old chapter-and-chapter novel". How to improve the old Zhang Hui novels, Zhang Henshui suggested a step-by-step approach. "For all the stereotypes in Zhang Hui's novels, I always adopt a method of gradually eliminating them." In terms of specific improvement techniques, he is "taking society as the classics and taking love as the latitude." That's because of the structure of the story and the convenience of text organization. "This has its nostalgic side. But he also thinks: "As for improvement, I added some descriptions of scenery and psychology from the beginning. Sometimes, I will write some tips. To tell the truth, this is from a western novel. This "innovative" side is exactly where he "improved". These have all been used in works such as "Crying and Laughing".

Zhang Henshui not only affirmed the artistic value of Zhang Hui's novels from the perspective of serving the audience of "ordinary women", but also recognized the value of martial arts novels, romance novels and historical novels from the perspective of serving the audience of "ordinary women". From his article My Road to Novel Writing, we can see that he developed from martial arts to romance to social romance to historical anti-Japanese war novels. Along such a development path, let's first discuss Zhang Henshui's understanding of the theory of martial arts novels. Zhang Henshui said that when he was thirteen or fourteen years old, he liked to read martial arts novels such as Elvis Presley, Seven Swords and Thirteen Heroes. He also made up a martial arts story to tell his younger brothers and sisters, and showed them his "chivalrous figure" painted by imitating Elvis Presley condoms, which made them "laugh". Because of his preference for martial arts novels, as a profound cultural accumulation, he always adds a little "martial arts" image to his romance, or permeates some "martial arts" factors into his social romance. This is because he deeply realized that in the lower classes of China, he was most interested in martial arts novels at first. Therefore, in the 1940s, he also wrote a paper entitled "Martial Arts Novels of the Underclass", which formed the joint relationship between his theory and creation of martial arts novels. In this article, he analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of martial arts novels and the reasons why the lower classes are interested in them, and put forward the problem of reforming martial arts novels. Zhang Henshui thinks that all the characters in China's lower class have the color of advocating heroism, which is the result of martial arts stories and lessons. Martial arts novels teach readers to "resist violence, resist corruption, and tell the oppressed to unite and sacrifice themselves", but their lessons have great shortcomings: First, "too strong feudal ideas often make heroes slaves", like Huang Tianba and Bai Yutang. The second is "complete fantasy, unrealistic"; Third, there are "many mistakes" in the method of struggle. The lower classes love to read martial arts novels because of their low social status and too much suffering. "No injustice is about to continue, no anger is about to subside." So they entrusted their resentment to this fantasy martial arts novel to relieve their depression. Zhang Henshui's understanding of this theory is consistent with his novel creation. In his creation, it is from the ideal of eliminating evil and punishing violence to meet the needs of civil society and create characters full of "chivalrous spirit". Most of the "chivalrous men" in his novels are poor people who oppose evil forces. None of them became "tame running dogs" of the government. In his martial arts novels, such as Jian Xin and Biography of Heroes in the Central Plains, the martial arts of the characters are mostly possible in real life and can play a role in educating the people. From the chivalrous figure created by Zhang Henshui, we can still see that he was influenced by tradition and made a breakthrough.

Secondly, it investigates the theoretical view of Zhang Henshui's romantic novels. Zhang Henshui created many romantic novels, and he also put forward the problem of transforming romantic novels in theory. In his Introduction to Beauty, he believes that the content of romance novels is never more than the love of triangles and polygons, and the ending is "If you don't get married, it's just where you will go". However, it is difficult to express love and get rid of triangle and polygon love completely without being divorced from modern society. The structure of the novel must have an intersection, "there is not much romance", and where to find the intersection? Therefore, as a result of his thinking and exploration, he still can't completely get rid of the previous "stereotype" and can only "try to avoid it in this stereotype, or refresh the readers' eyes and ears a little". In this way, the romance in Beauty Grace can be achieved. "At first, you don't write about fighting between rival lovers. In the end, it seems that one party is married rather than married, and the other party seems to have left rather than left." Compared with the ending of traditional romance novels, "Where are you going? You're not married yet", it presents a different form. From the combination of creation and theory

In fact, we can see that he transformed the romance novels by adding romance to the martial arts (such as "Ridiculous") or combining romance with "society" (such as "The History of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Ming Dynasty" and "The Story of Asren"). In the narrative form, most of them are multi-angle relationships of "one man counting women" or "one woman counting men", and the love ending is mostly sad. It can be seen from a preface to "The Cause of Crying and Laughing" that he wrote "Regret for the Past", which not only inherited the tradition but also made a breakthrough in the tragic art and tragic ending. Traditional literature about love between men and women usually ends in a happy ending. The May 4th New Literature broke the pattern of "happy reunion" and appeared in the form of "no reunion", which made the tragic art develop by leaps and bounds. But over time, "reunion doctrine" gradually formed, which was unfavorable to the development of tragedy. Zhang Henshui not only realized the common problem of "happy reunion", but also was dissatisfied with the prevalence of "non-reunion doctrine" after the May 4th Movement. Therefore, he constructed his own tragic art world in the dual thinking activities of reflecting on tradition and observing reality. Zhang Henshui said: "The happy ending of the novel is a common problem in China. A dream of red mansions breaks this example, which makes sense, so people who have written long stories recently tend to be non-reunion. In fact, if the reunion is not the same and intriguing, it will be very solid. " ⑧ The reason for the irony is neither "reunion doctrine" nor "non-reunion doctrine", but it shows the characteristics of "refreshing" by leaving lingering thoughts.