From critical realism to socialist realism: A historical survey of realism in modern Chinese literature.

摘要

The present study answers questions such as the following: what is socialist realism in China? was socialist realism in China enforced solely by the Chinese Communist Party? how has socialist realism been able to remain dominant in China for more than half a century? and can this dominance be explained by the fact that socialist realism in China has been consistently backed by the power of the Party, without the support and consensus of China's writers and critics? My point throughout this investigation is that the Chinese inclination to socialist realism in the past decades has come both from within and without. Were it not for the beneficial Chinese soil and climate, critical realism would not have been transformed into socialist realism; and the tree of socialist realism could not have reached its present height, and thrived so long in this part of the world.; In the middle of the nineteenth century, under the threatening cannons of the Western powers and Japan, China opened its door unwillingly to the outside world. By the turn of the twentieth century, it became impossible to separate the development of China from the development of world civilization; modern Chinese literature too became part of world literature. This change in Chinese literature was brought about by the introduction of the modes and theories of foreign, especially Western, literature. It is the literature of realism--nineteenth-century realism--or rather, "critical realism", a term which is used in the present study, that eventually drew the attention of and was followed by the majority of modern Chinese writers. However, it did not take long for critical realism to be changed into socialist realism. It cannot be denied that the Chinese Communist Party has made a great impact on the formation of socialist realism in China, but at the same time the context of this impact should not be ignored: it is China's writers and their readers, together with the political and social situations of China that have contributed the most to the establishment and dominance of socialist realism in modern and contemporary China. Without a clear understanding of this context, it is impossible to grasp the essence of the struggles that have been carried on in China in the past decades; it is also impossible to comprehend the ups and downs of the "democratic movement" of the intellectuals in the past century.