Miscellaneous articles. The essay in a narrow sense refers to a style in modern prose, which mainly focuses on discussion and criticism. It is a general term for essays, short comments, miscellaneous notes, gossip, rambling, satirical sketches, humorous sketches, intellectual sketches, literary and political sketches, etc. China's modern essays originated in the May 4th literary revolution, and first appeared in New Youth magazine under the name of Random Thoughts. Great achievements were made in the 1920s, and it became popular in the literary world in 1930s and 1940s. After that, it flourished again in the 1980s. Based on extensive social criticism and civilization criticism, essays have a strong spirit of rational criticism and ideological enlightenment. In art, it generally pursues visualization and lyricism of reasoning, and generally has a distinctive comic color of irony and humor and a philosophical character of witty argument, with multiple functions of warning the world, appreciating ugliness, dispelling doubts and empathizing. Lu Xun is an outstanding essay writer in China, and he pushed his essays to a highly mature position. In addition, Zhou Zuoren, Lin Yutang, Qu Qiubai, Guo Moruo, Mao Dun, Xu Maoyong, Tang Tao, Nie Gannu, Xia Yan, Ba people, Deng Tuo, Fang Lin and others are representative essay writers in various periods in China.
Prose is a short literary social commentary. It is both logical and literary. Short and pithy, humorous and satirical in writing, lashing ugliness, criticizing current malpractices, and seeking truth to analyze life. Good prose is called "dagger" or "gun throwing"
When reading prose, we should contact the background of the times, understand the truth contained in the interpretation of images, taste the meaning, feel the interest of harmony, and carefully ponder the vivid, humorous and sharp language.
The origin of prose
Liu Xie, a literary theorist in the Southern Dynasties (Liang Dynasty), was the first person in the history of China literature to put forward the concept of "essays" as an independent style. He wrote a chapter "Essays" in Wen Xin Diao Long. On the one hand, he summed up the creation of previous essays and named it "Essays". On the other hand, he listed three kinds of prose since Qin and Han Dynasties, among which Yu Quan's Answer to the King of Chu, Meicheng's Seven Hair and Yang Xiong's Julian are the earliest representative works. But in fact, as early as the rise of pre-Qin prose, essays have also appeared. Qin Baijia's articles are actually essays. Later, the essay had a new development. Han Yu's essays in the Tang Dynasty, Liu Zongyuan's essays on tung leaves, Pi Rixiu's essays in the late Tang Dynasty, Lu Guimeng's essays in Luo Yin's essays, and Liu Ji's Poems on Orange Juice in the Ming Dynasty are all famous masterpieces. Essays not only have the earliest origin, but also have a high status from the beginning. As Ban Gu said: "The sage flows, and it is built from the official. He is both Confucianism and Mohism, and he has the same name and the same law. He knows that the country has this, and it is not contrary to the king, and it is better than it. " It can be seen that essays played a great role in the society at that time.
After the May 4th Movement, many revolutionaries, thinkers and writers have written excellent essays. One of the most outstanding is Lu Xun, who is a master of creating a new style of essays. He said: "When the wind and sand blow, wolves and tigers flock", and the sketch is "Daggers and spears should be sharp and practical", which is "something that fights our way out for survival with readers"; It is also "to react or confront harmful things immediately, to be the nerve of induction, and to be the hand and foot of attack and defense." This will accurately explain the role of modern prose.
On one kind of prose: prose. It is a literary newspaper that directly and quickly reflects social events or social tendencies. Characterized by short, lively and sharp. It has a wide range of contents and various forms. Miscellaneous feelings, rambling, essays and essays about social life, cultural thoughts and political events can all be classified into this category.
Prose features
Essays are literary papers with the following characteristics:
First, the harmony and unity of combativeness and pleasure. Essays are combative, and they are "sensitive nerves" and "offensive and defensive brothers" of "harmful things". Prose is also pleasant, so that readers can say goodbye to those old things happily in laughter and enjoy the spirit of beauty. Fighting brings happiness.
Second, the organic combination of demonstration and visualization. The essence of essays is argumentative, with the color of "argumentative". It overwhelms the enemy with the power of logic, and the author's ultimate goal is to discuss right and wrong, distinguish right from wrong and reveal the truth. However, the argument of the essay is concrete. The most important thing about the vividness of essays is that "disadvantages are often taken as types". Although it says "one nose, one mouthful and one hair", its "image" is palpable; Reading them together, not only a certain image is more vivid, but also the "eyebrows of the times" can be seen from it.
Third, the clever use of humor, satire and literary talent. Humor reveals the innocence and irrationality in life with a kind smile through rhetorical devices such as innuendo, allegory and pun. Satire refers to the use of implicit language or exaggerated methods to ridicule and ridicule people or things that are backward and dark. Essay brushwork is a kind of brushwork mainly based on irony and humor. Essay language should also be literary, concise and unique, often in harmony with Zhuang, parallel to escape, interesting.
In addition, prose has another feature: short and pithy.
To appreciate essays, we must first grasp the stylistic features of essays. From the features of essays, we can easily understand and appreciate the ideological content and artistic features of essays. Essays are logical in nature, and we can read essays with logical thinking. Essays are also visual reasoning, so we should look at essays with image thinking. When appreciating prose, we should pay attention to the following aspects: "big" and "small" in material selection, taking the big with the small, and seeing the big with the small; The "emptiness" (reason) and "reality" of artistic conception (for example) control reality with emptiness, and bring emptiness with reality; The "opening" and "closing" of the text layout can be opened well; The "Zhuang" and "He" of language and writing are both harmonious and harmonious. Generally speaking, to appreciate prose, we should be familiar with its background. The social "types" summarized in excellent essays have universal significance beyond the times; In this sense, readers are not familiar with the background of the times, but can also grasp the substantive content of essays.