팡팡(方方)의 『風景』 硏究

Abstract

Fangfang's 「Fengjing(Landscapes)」 is usually classified as a neo-realistic novel by Chinese literary critics. Neo-realistic novels go beyond past literary genres, in that they describe reality as it is in itself by depicting minutiae of everyday lives. They spotlight ordinary lives instead of history and society, and ordinary folks instead of heroes. In this thesis, I carefully examine the living environments of the major character in 「Fengjing」 that the author delineates in such details, and study the asthetics that it pursues, and analyze its narrative structure. First, I delve into the narrative structure within the framework of the story of the novel. I analyze the way in which the characters of the main figures give dynamics, fun and curiosities to the novel, and the technique of going back and forth between times through flash back and foreshadowing. And I try to understand the significance of the omniscient viewpoint from which the author describes the characeters' thoughts and feelings in the first person. Second, I analyze various incedents in the novel within the general neo-realistic framework. I consider how destitute and miserable life environments and survival instincts are described, and the way in which the instinctive desires such as sexual impulses are described. And I analyze struggles and distorted impluses to escape secular life. In conclusion, I evaluate 「Fengjing」, and more generally neo-realistic novels spanning mid-1980 to late-1990, as follows. First, as they describe ordinary people's lives as they are, excluding moralistic and idealistic elements, they challenged the contemporary socialistic realism in literature. Since the 21st century, pure literature is losing its grip in Chinese readership. Publishers have come to have more power, and commercialism is prevalent, and mass media literature is taking its place. But the artistic and asthetic values of pure literature should not be discarded.