Key words:
Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio: Carrier Selection, Language Form Creation Method, Aesthetic Distance and Defamiliarization
In the last century, the Russian formalism literary criticism school put forward the problem of "defamiliarization" effect of art, that is, literature can update people's feelings about life and experience and defamiliarize things that have become ordinary or unconscious. The "defamiliarization" of art is to reverse people's habits, "defamiliarize" the objective things seen in real life, and use it to change the accustomed things, find out the reorganization of these objective phenomena in the artistic process, and then create a new artistic realm. As the aesthetician said: "There is a distance between beauty and real life. To see the beauty of things in essence, we must look at them from an appropriate distance "(aesthetic letters). The essence of "defamiliarization" lies in constantly renewing our old feelings about life, things and the world, freeing people from the shackles of narrow daily relations and getting rid of the habitual shackles they are used to, instead of adopting automation and mechanization, and adopting "a unique way in which people creatively distort things beyond recognition", so that people can constantly make new discoveries even in the face of things they turn a blind eye to, so as to feel the object.
This paper aims to explore how Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio can achieve the aesthetic effect of defamiliarization from three aspects.
First, carrier selection.
The text of Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio is unique in the choice of carrier, which is the most noteworthy of all the artistic skills displayed in the text.
Pu Songling, a cynical and talented person, chose the carrier in a strange environment far away from the world. The artistic environment and world he wanted to focus on were illusory and unrealistic. Such as hades, hell, heaven, Dragon Palace, dreams, and legendary foreign lands. These scenes are unfamiliar, and the characters and plots are unreal. "Fairy fox ghosts", people and ghosts fall in love, cross-dressing, hades, ghosts. This has greatly reversed people's habits and strongly updated people's existing life experiences and feelings. Punishing evil and promoting good, loving men and women, returning Yao women to their hometowns, what goes around comes around, examination rooms, etc., which have become commonplace in people's lives, are unfamiliar here and have been labeled with a magical and charming coat.
The text of Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio has created many immortal characters for us. Ying Ning, who is charming, is innocent, often laughs and doesn't even understand the love between husband and wife. When her lover Wang Sheng confessed to her, she said, "I'm not used to sleeping with strangers". What a silly daughter. Her silvery laughter embarrassed "all the women present" and "everyone was happy for her smile." She is like a blooming flower, fragrant, pleasant and fascinating. Unfortunately: "This thing should only exist in the sky, and it can't be heard on the earth several times." Ying Ning, who makes people dream, turned out to be a foreigner! In Yu Xiang, Huang Sheng and Yu Xiang are brilliant, two of a kind is devoted to justice, and the passionate Yu Xiang is not our kind, but fairy peony. In Chains, scholar Yang Yuwei studies hard at night. In the dead of night, suddenly a beautiful girl came uninvited and spent a wonderful night reading under the window with Yang Sheng. She was as happy as a duck to water. Beautiful chain is also a ghost, which makes people sad. In Xiao Xie, two young girls play with Shen Tao: "Brush your beard, blindfold and wear your nose with fine things, and fight for love with Shen Tao." Shen Tao, He De, He Cai, "A beautiful woman is hard to find, so why duplicity?" But it turns out that this is not a good thing. Ying Ning, Xiao Xie, Xiaocui, Pianpian, Wanxia, Xiang Yu, Jin Ge, Guan Niang and Nie are dazzling and thrilling artistic images, all of which are foreigners far away from us, making us unattainable. Pu Songling seems to know this well, leaving these wonderful characters in foreign countries and consciously causing the distance between readers and aesthetic objects. However, this distance has not formed an insurmountable gap. In fact, all kinds of unreal scenes, characters and plots contain almost real events, temperament and logic. The essential characteristics of hades are sociality and reality. "Fairy fox and ghosts" intervene in human society and participate in contradictions and conflicts in real society, thus making people feel that "ghosts" live among us, which is real and tangible. Therefore, the dream of hades and paradise expressed in the text of Liaozhai is actually a reflection of the real world, while the charm of the flower demon fox with miraculous characteristics is a variant of social people. The characters, plots and scenes provided by words not only make people feel strange, novel and far away from us, but also make people feel real. The specific distance between us does not put us in absolute opposition to artistic objects, but only forms a necessary barrier in form. As the Russian formalist aesthetician said in this century, "the artistic method is to make the object of expression strange, form obstacles for readers, and change an object from a commonly understood state into a new perceptual object." .
Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio, a detached relationship between the aesthetic object and the reader caused by carrier selection skills, has produced a strange aesthetic effect of "defamiliarization", which is more likely to arouse readers' curiosity, arouse novelty and surprise, and alleviate the paralysis and blindness caused by "getting used to it". So as to enhance the aesthetic stimulation and achieve the ultimate goal of art, this effect is brought by Pu Songling's "tone sandhi, not describing freaks and dissidents", which is the first problem we must pay attention to when discussing the aesthetic effect of "defamiliarization" in Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio.
Second, the language characteristics
The language of Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio has duality, which properly fixes the distance between readers and aesthetic objects and produces a defamiliarization aesthetic effect.
Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio was rewritten in classical Chinese under the historical trend that the vernacular language of the novel has been irreversible since four or five hundred years ago. For our readers today, the distance between reality and fiction tends to expand. But most people who have read this novel find it difficult to replace its language with vernacular Chinese. No matter how good the vernacular translation is, it will certainly lose some of the artistic conception and charm of the original. Here, the use of ancient prose provides an aesthetic distance for today's reception of Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio, forming a unique context of Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio. It is like a narrow door. If you are lucky enough to enter it, its inherent charm will make you fascinated and linger. However, if limited by knowledge, we can only take the vernacular translated by others as a ladder, and we can only have a little knowledge, but we can't appreciate the beautiful scenery and perceive the aesthetic effect of "defamiliarization".
The language of Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio is a reformed classical Chinese with extremely prominent duality. On the one hand, it is the innate advantages of classical Chinese: conciseness, conciseness and vividness. On the other hand, the language of Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio is a reformed classical Chinese, which is popular and vivid, absorbs the characteristics of spoken language and incorporates the style of classical Chinese.
Let's look at the following complete story first.
Li Jilin, photographed in Yuanjiang, was newly appointed and was surprised to see Tang Ying, a cat and dog. The subordinate said, "People in this village pay tribute to elegant people." Less, people and animals each account for half; When they moved, they all became people and left together. One day, I went out to visit, on the way. Suddenly, the lady shouted, "I am a villain!" " It is money to take the place of the Dutch, ask for leave, get angry, refuse to listen, and rush to the topic. Leave it alone. The servant rushed into the market. When he found one, he asked. The physiognomy said, "You ate." From top to bottom. Push it; Push at least one strand, see a tomb of flesh and blood, break it open with a sharp knife, take out a stone and say, "The more, the better." But run back. As soon as I heard the vulgarity, when I was in the minister's room, my hand flew out, entered the room and stole property. Assuming that the owner feels that the situation does not let him go, then this person's arm is useless.
This is the full text of Volume 14 "Yuan Customs", with just 250 words, which tells a story with complicated plot and outstanding characters' thoughts and personalities. "When I first arrived, I was surprised to see cats and dogs in the hall." "There are very few people and animals; When they moved, they all became people again. They all went to the ground for leave and were furious. When they saw the flesh and blood in the grave, they broke it with a sharp knife. The language is extremely concise, concise and expressive.
Let's look at the language in "Promoting Weaving".
A worm can't move, as stupid as a wooden chicken. The boy smiled again. Trying to pull out the beard with pig hair, but still not moving, the teenager smiled again. Repeatedly provoked, the bug was furious and went straight to it, so he hit each other and cheered. I saw the bug jump up, its tail stretched out and its beard reached the enemy's collar. Youth is terrible, stop it. Insects are singing proudly, as if reporting to the Lord,
This is a passage from "Promoting Weaving". Among them, the words such as "rage", "rush", "show one's beard", "blow" and "rush to the enemy's neck" are vivid, concise and have a consistent momentum. No matter how clever the announcer is, he dare not translate rashly, so as not to lose his charm. If someone translates "tail sticking up and beard sticking up" into "tail sticking up and beard sticking up and hair sticking up", the charm will be gone. Someone added some additional ingredients before and after "going straight", which translates as "running forward" The meaning is different, and the momentum is reduced by half. This is the language of Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio. As Tolstoy said, "Since you can't add a word, you can't subtract a word and you can't change a word". In Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio, such sentences are vivid, vivid, three-dimensional, rhythmic and concise, such as Avalanche, Lightning, Ship Surprise, Rocking the Mountain, Destroying Trees at Night, and Small Print. "The waves catch the stars and the boat shakes." When the scholar saw Qian, he said, "If you laugh, your eyelashes will be an inch long. If you don't know each other." These exquisite languages are significantly different from our daily language. They use artistic means to strengthen, compress and reverse the daily language, making the common language deformed and more expressive, and at the same time, the language has become "alienated", thus achieving the purpose of alleviating the paralysis of daily language. Literary language is a combination of skills. The skills here include images, sounds, rhythms and narrative features. , which is related to all literary forms. The ingenious use of some poems in the 500 articles of Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio fully proves this function, which enables us to re-perceive the world and re-examine our living space through this language.
The language of Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio is refined and concise classical Chinese, but it has been transformed into new classical Chinese. Let's look at the following example.
One day, a young woman smiled and said, "Paopiao's head is so happy. When did Xue Guzi dream? " The girl greeted her with a smile and said, "Flower City Lady, you have been involved for a long time. The southwest wind is tight and blowing today. Can the little brother hold it? " Yue: "Another handmaid." The woman smiled and said, "Flower City Lady is a kiln worker! Will Fu Na come? " He said, "Fang rang, but I felt it was gone." So I took the money. Gu Sheng said, "Little Lang Jun burns incense." After a look, 20 is three or four years old, which is more than enough. Kind-hearted ... Cheng smiled and said, "These two young people are very bad. If my husband is Mrs. vinegar gourd, I am afraid of jumping into the sky. " The woman also said, "If you are lucky, you will freeze to death!" " Clap with each other. -
This quotation is all lively and popular vernacular except for the sentence "Your toes are too long to mention" and a few function words in classical Chinese. Not only are the words popular, but the sentence patterns are also very similar to everyday language. The dialogue is popular and vivid, with a strong voice and a high degree of visualization. If individual vernacular words are occasionally seen in the dialogues between historical biographies and other classical Chinese novels, such large-scale dialogues close to vernacular can not be found in the classical Chinese works before and after Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio, which is unique to the text of Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio.
Let's look at a complete article.
Autumn is coming, and a huge ship is drifting from the ocean in Lingnan. There are eleven people in the world, dressed in bird feathers and brilliant in literary talent. Say to yourself: "Luzon people. The wind capsized and dozens of people died; Only eleven people were attached to the giant tree and floated to the big island. Once every five years. The sun catches birds and insects and eats them; In the cave at night, feathers are woven into sails. Suddenly, another boat came, without sails, and was also blown off in the sea by the wind. So I returned it and was led to Macao by the strong wind. " The governor's questions were sparse and sent back to China. -"Foreigners"
"Lingnan came from the ocean on a huge ship. There are eleven people in the world, and dozens of people have died. Eleven people were attached to the giant tree and floated to the big island, which is almost the same as the language of "so they will be blown back by the strong wind and led to Macao".
In Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio, there are many colloquial words such as little brother, little maid, beautiful aunt, little boy, little brother, old scholar, old animal, often losing money, suffering, dying happily and having to.
The results of psychological research show that things that are too familiar or completely unfamiliar are difficult to attract our attention and interest, because being too familiar may turn a blind eye, while being completely unfamiliar will produce psychological rejection. In my opinion, a strange language has at least the following four characteristics: novelty, strangeness, beauty and interest. New, this is the first striking feature. Can readers be familiar with the familiar people described? Let's talk about strangeness. When readers find that this seemingly unfamiliar language originally contains people and things that we are used to, we just accidentally stepped into the "trap" arranged by the author for us. Can we not "tut"? Beauty. Because of the author's skill, the familiar personnel have opened a certain distance between content and expression. The existence of this distance enables us to jump out of the mechanical appreciation habit and appreciate the beauty of the familiar personnel from another angle. Distance produces beauty, which is a basic principle of aesthetics. Moreover, the humorous expression of words itself has an implicit beauty. As for fun, it goes without saying. Don't you think it's interesting to constantly remove obstacles in a strange and familiar context and always give yourself a sense of accomplishment?
The duality of the language in Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio corresponds to the duality of the artistic image caused by the choice of carrier, that is, the simple and simple classical Chinese style corresponds to the mystery of the underworld and ghosts. Popular, vivid and almost colloquial style corresponds to the foreign reality of hades and ghosts.