The literature of the Chinese nation is the fusion of the literature of all nationalities, with the literature of the Han nation as the main part. Chinese literature has a long history of thousands of years. It has its own characteristics with special content, form and style. It has its own aesthetic ideals, its own dominant ideological and cultural traditions and its own system of theoretical criticism. With its excellent history, diverse forms, numerous writers, rich works, unique style, distinctive personality, and seductive charm, it has become a dazzling treasure in the world's literary treasure house.
Due to its own language characteristics and the influence of Chinese philosophy and ethics, the Chinese literary movement has formed some characteristics that are different from foreign literature.
Chinese language is one of the oldest and oldest languages ??in the world. Chinese language and characters play a huge role in the formation and construction of Chinese literature: ① It is easy to cause specific images. Because Chinese characters have ideographic characteristics, their own arrangement sometimes evokes certain specific images. For example, Fu and parallel prose use a large number of characters with the same shape. The symbolic and ideographic characteristics of Chinese characters create a unique aesthetic effect. ② Chinese characters generally have a single meaning and one sound per character, which gives the syllable changes of Chinese poetry a unique set of rigorous rhythms and forms a neat and symmetrical formal beauty in appearance. ③ Chinese has four tones. Poets took advantage of this characteristic of the Chinese language and paid attention to the arrangement of word tones when writing poems. As a result, modern poetry (five-character rhymed poems, quatrains, seven-character rhymed poems, quatrains), Ci, Sanqu and other poetic styles came into being. And led the poetry world for thousands of years. The poem makes full use of the changes in the four tones, creating an artistic effect with distinctive rhythm and cadence. ④ As a special written language, classical Chinese can be separated from daily language for a long time and maintain the status of official language. This has led to the phenomenon that literature operates on two different tracks, classical Chinese and vernacular, with huge differences in content and form.
Chinese literature, in addition to having its own characteristics due to Chinese characters and language, also has its own unique system of literary concepts. This conceptual system is dominated by the traditional Chinese ideological system, and its ideological origin lies in the Confucian school founded by Confucius. Confucianism represented by Confucius and Mencius mainly affects China's national character and cultural thought in the following aspects. First, it is the thought of joining the world with "cultivating one's moral character, regulating one's family, governing the country, and bringing peace to the world" ("Book of Rites, University") as the core; second, it is the morality based on "benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness" as the standard The third is the ethical concept based on the order of "heaven, earth, king, relatives, and teachers"; the fourth is the philosophy of the mean based on "allowing one to hold within it" ("The Analects"). Under the control of this kind of thinking, Chinese literature whose function is to educate poems and essays focuses on political themes and ethical themes in content. The tendency to treat literature as an appendage of politics and as didactic has been treated as a justifiable tendency. The encounters between monarchs and ministers, the joys and sorrows of people's lives, the ups and downs of officialdom, the victory and defeat of wars, the rise and fall of countries, the gatherings and dispersions of life, the chaos of laws and regulations, the direction of ethics, etc., have always been the main theme of Chinese literature, whether it is poetry, prose, Whether it’s a novel or a drama, it’s no exception. Confucian philosophy of worldliness and enlightenment concepts have brought political enthusiasm, enterprising spirit and sense of social mission to Chinese literature, but at the same time they have inhibited the release of self-emotion, the bursting of free personality and the exploration of self-awareness, especially the concept of "preserving heavenly principles, The Neo-Confucian concept of "eliminating human desires" has cast a haze of rationalism on literature. Parallel to the above content and characteristics is the aesthetic pursuit of "gold mean". Chinese literature emphasizes the beauty of balance, "joy but not obscenity, sadness but not sadness", and generally does not express emotions too enthusiastically. Most of the Chinese old-style poems are emotional and restrained, with implicit thoughts, exhaustive words and endless meanings. They also show a strong color of rationalism.
In the history of Chinese thought, the ideological systems of Confucianism and Taoism complement each other, and Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism often merge. Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism are different and antagonistic, and they each exert different influences on Chinese literature. The so-called thought of "If you are powerful, you can do good to the whole world; if you are poor, you can do good to yourself." Confucianism inherits the spirit of doing good to all, while Taoism develops the thought of being good alone based on the purpose of "inaction". Among Chinese literati, the thoughts of actively engaging with the world and passively withdrawing from the world are often intertwined, and each other waxes and wanes. In literary works, this phenomenon has a clear manifestation. If "be good to the world" and "be good to oneself" are the complementary life trends of ancient scholar-bureaucrats, then generosity, lamentation and cynicism have become the common psychological states and artistic ideas of ancient intellectuals. Although Confucianism has a dominant influence on the overall style of Chinese literature, the influence of Lao-Zhuang philosophy on Chinese literature and art is also huge. This influence has two aspects: ① The view of "big sounds sound loud, elephants are invisible" reveals the dialectics of virtuality and reality, nothingness and existence in art, and points out that "being is born from nothingness". It plays an extremely important role in forming the characteristics of the implicit and concise artistic expression of Chinese literature. Chinese literature places great emphasis on the expression of reality with virtual reality and dynamic expression with stillness. Chinese literati do not like to describe directly in detail, but leave the space of artistic feeling and artistic imagination to the readers themselves to taste, speculate and think about, pursue those indescribable sounds and elephants - the ultimate beauty, and create The artistic realm where silence is better than sound. ② "The great system cannot be cut off" and "Tao follows nature." "No cutting" emphasizes the integrity of nature, emphasizing the simplicity, plainness and simplicity of nature.
However, the supreme, metaphysical Tao requires the "method" of metaphysical nature, and what is emphasized here is a kind of natural beauty. Therefore, Chinese literary artists have always combined arduous technical training with a skill-free state that does not reveal the marks of a knife or axe. "It seems ordinary and the most extraordinary, but it is easy but difficult to achieve." This is the artistic state that most Chinese writers have been striving for throughout their lives. The portrayal is also a true reflection of their artistic path. Due to the above two influences, when comparing Chinese literature with Western literature, generally speaking, Western literature appears to be straightforward, straightforward, and straightforward, while Chinese literature is euphemistic, tortuous, and subtle; Western literature tends to be sharp, profound, and broad, while Chinese literature is It tends to be subtle and witty; Western literature is still spread out in a thousand miles, while Chinese literature is still concentrated in a vast area. The difference in general tendencies of this aesthetic is evident.
Some people divide art into two types: expressive and representational, based on the different aesthetic relationships between art and the world. The art of representation strives to reflect the real world objectively and accurately according to the way of perception and cognition, so that the appearance of the real world and the image of art are consistent and coincident; while the art of expression is based on the subjective way of spiritual reflection. Willing to break down the inherent normal combination of reality and reassemble it. Generally speaking, Chinese literature tends to be expressive, which can be seen from the selection of genres and creative methods. First of all, in terms of genre, Chinese literature focuses on lyricism, while narrative literature emerged later and is less developed. Throughout the history of poetry, starting from the Book of Songs, the earliest collection of ancient poetry, lyric poetry has become a great phenomenon, while narrative poetry has always been unpopular. Chinese novels only started to improve in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, but it was only after the Tang Dynasty that the consciousness of novels became real. The emergence of novels was even postponed to the Ming Dynasty. Chinese dramatic literature was not only produced late, but also full of strong lyricism, close to the pattern of lyric poetry. The hypothetical virtual expression technique of Chinese opera is more popular among some expressionist dramatists (such as Brecht). Secondly, in terms of creative methods, Chinese literature does not focus on realism but on freehand brushwork. For example, the themes of traveling in mountains and rivers, exploring famous places, and paying tribute to ancient monuments in classical poetry can be processed into narrative or descriptive works. However, in many poems, they are often replaced by artistic means such as symbols, hints, metaphors, and lyricism. , and blur the scene that is visible to the eyes. For example, the Tang Dynasty poet Chen Ziang's "Song of Climbing Youzhou Terrace": "I saw no ancient people in front of me, and no newcomers in the future. I thought about the long time of heaven and earth, and shed tears alone." There is not a single word about the specific description of the ancient platform in Youzhou, which is completely The sigh of life, the reflection of the soul and the burst of ideas. Ancient poetry often advocates the blending of scenes. In fact, it mainly uses scenes to express emotions, focusing on the catharsis and expression of pent-up emotions in the heart.
Theoretical criticism of ancient Chinese literature has formed its own system in its own development, with a whole set of categories that are different from those in the West. They are not mysterious but subtle. They are often simulacra and examples for understanding. They are not easy to fall into the trap of words, such as Qi, character, rhyme, taste, intention, spirit, body, texture, style, artistic conception, etc. After continuous evolution and improvement, these categories have become increasingly rich in connotation, and gradually intersected with each other to form a network and constitute a system. Compared with Western aesthetic categories such as tragedy, comedy, sublimity, comedy, humor, and typical. The various categories of ancient Chinese literary theory show some polysemy characteristics, but more attention is paid to the harmony of subject and object. These general characteristics of Chinese literature have undergone significant changes since the May Fourth Movement. For example, in modern literature, as novels and dramas have received more attention, they no longer show the characteristics of lyricism over narrative, and expression over representation. The dominance of Confucianism in ancient literature has been replaced by modern democratic and socialist trends. Many new categories and concepts have also emerged in literary theory, and the language structure has also undergone tremendous changes. All these have given Chinese literature the characteristics of a new national literature.