During the ten-year Cultural Revolution, countless young intellectuals joined the rural movement. The appearance of "scar literature" directly originated from going to the countryside. It mainly describes the tragic experiences of educated youth, intellectuals, persecuted officials and ordinary people in urban and rural areas in that terrible era.
The "scar literature" that caused an early response among readers was The Head Teacher published by Beijing writer Liu in People's LiteratureNo. 1977 andNo. 1 1. At that time, critics believed that the main value of this short story was to expose the "mental internal injuries" caused by the "distortion" of a considerable number of teenagers' souls during the Cultural Revolution. Some people think that the call of the times to "save children besieged by the Gang of Four" echoes Lu Xun's call to save children poisoned by feudal ethics in Diary of a Madman, which makes the novel have a profound sense of history.
However, the name of "Scar Literature" comes from Lu Xinhua's short story Scar published in Wen Wei Po on August 1978+0. In the sense of "reflecting the seriousness of people's internal injuries" and "calling for healing wounds", it was recognized by people who promoted the new changes in literature at that time. Subsequently, novels that exposed the historical trauma of the Cultural Revolution emerged one after another, among which the works of educated youth, such as Holy Mission, Noble Pine Tree, Struggle of the Soul, Dedication and Marriage, the large-wall literature of Cong, such as Red Magnolia under the Wall, and Feng Jicai's early "Wounded Literature" all had high artistic achievements. The rural "scar literature" represented by Zhou Keqin's Xu Mao and his daughters.
The academic circles use the word "scar" to summarize the literary trend of thought. It was first seen in the article "Speech at the Literature Seminar of San Francisco State University, California, USA" by Xu Jieyu, a China scholar living in the United States. Connie Hsu thought that Chinese mainland's short stories were the most active after 1976+00 months, and said: "The most popular content is called' mourning for generations', that is,' scar literature', because there is a novel called' scar' which is very popular." Some people have raised objections to this general term, thinking that "exposed literature" is more in line with the literary essence of this stage, but since this word has been accepted by most researchers in academic circles, we extend it here.
There are many contents involved in "scar literature", but most of them reveal the scars caused by the Cultural Revolution in a true, simple and even rough form, thus venting the great pain and hatred accumulated in the heart in the past ten years, which coincides with the most primitive function of literature: "venting".