Exploration on the Teaching Reform of Modern and Contemporary Literature in China
This paper briefly analyzes the problems existing in the teaching of modern and contemporary literature courses, and focuses on the exploration of teaching reform in the teaching process-paying attention to teaching methods, grasping subject trends, improving teaching methods and strengthening extracurricular reading, so as to provide reference for the teaching reform of modern and contemporary literature courses and related courses in China.
Keywords:: China Modern and Contemporary Literature Teaching Current Situation Curriculum Reform
Modern and contemporary literature in China is a basic course for Chinese majors in colleges and universities. Learning this course well is of great help to students' knowledge structure, thinking mode and even life ideal. However, with the development of the times and the change of values, China's modern and contemporary literature, like ancient literature, foreign literature and other basic disciplines that cannot produce immediate results, has been increasingly ignored. Compared with the 1980s, students' enthusiasm for learning China's modern and contemporary literature has generally decreased. As students of Chinese Department, many people don't know the masterpieces of modern masters such as Lu Xun, Guo Moruo, Mao Dun, Ba Jin, Lao She and Cao Yu, and it is not uncommon to know the works of contemporary writers, especially since the 1990s. A large number of students did not appreciate the profound connotation of China's modern and contemporary literature through reading, and certainly could not deeply understand the humanistic spirit contained in literary works. This phenomenon is worrying. In view of this situation, we have also used some brains and made some tentative explorations in teaching reform to improve the classroom teaching effect.
First, pay attention to teaching according to law and improve students' theoretical literacy.
Studying China's contemporary literature is not only to let students know some literary phenomena and knowledge, but more importantly, to grasp their internal relations through phenomena and knowledge, that is, to grasp the law of the occurrence and development of literature, from phenomena and knowledge to theoretical generalization and speculation, and to give students a theoretical weapon to observe and interpret literary phenomena and writers' works. In teaching, we should try our best to highlight the theoretical color and stress the theoretical height, and strive to use the laws of literature and art to run through the historical context and integrate the construction of literary history according to the laws. For example, when we talk about obscure poetry, we should not focus on the detailed analysis of some poets and their poems, but on the theoretical explanation of the integrity of obscure poetry, focusing on the causes and concept definition of obscure poetry, especially on its aesthetic and artistic characteristics. The poet's poems are only quoted as examples when talking about the characteristics of aesthetic art, which confirms the theoretical point of view. Finally, why is misty poetry beautiful-vague cognition, vague beauty, and the "blood relationship" between beauty and vagueness. In this way, students will have a macroscopic theoretical understanding of this newly rising poetry group. For another example, to talk about the exploration drama in the new period, we should first talk about the concept, types, aesthetic artistic characteristics and value evaluation of the exploration drama, and then talk about the representative works, such as There is a heat flow outside the house, Savage, Nie Liang, the dog, and the chronicle of mulberry trees, so that students can have a more complete and comprehensive understanding of the trend and achievements of drama exploration. Another example is Wang Meng's novels. If we use more space to analyze his works and introduce his "keen ability to perceive and find problems", "innovative experiment of traditional and modern techniques" and "contradictory and multi-directional value judgment", this discussion is comprehensive and complete, but so far, the theoretical penetration is not enough, and the most prominent characteristics of Wang Meng have not been revealed. When I talk about this topic, I regard Wang Meng as the representative of "Oriental Stream of Consciousness Novels", highlighting his pioneering contribution of "being the first to eat crabs" in the creation of stream of consciousness novels, and emphatically introducing three main techniques of his stream of consciousness novels, namely, the basic means of pursuing sensory impression, inner monologue and free association, dream description and radial psychological structure of time and space crossing.
When talking about these viewpoints, taking Wang Meng's works as examples, this paper not only reviews Wang Meng's works, but also shows the basic theory of stream-of-consciousness novels, so that students can not only understand a writer and several works, but also understand the essence of stream-of-consciousness novels, so as to draw inferences from other works in the future. For example, if we talk about the theme of a work, it would be thin if we only talk about the theme of the work. It will be much more profound if we explore the source, explore the motif of literary history and examine the theme of the works from the perspective of thematology. For example, "Red Sorghum" takes "childhood perspective" as the ontology, describes the anti-Japanese struggle from the emotional memory of parents-Dou Guan, who was 13 years old at that time, and narrates the romantic life of grandparents and the human nature that flourished in distortion from the memory of grandson "I". This leads to the theme of father in the history of literature. Starting with the earliest prototype-Homer's epic "Odysseus's father who returned to his hometown to reunite with his wife and children after many years at sea", this paper discusses the search for father in modern tramp novels-flattering father in Sting's novel-hostile father in Stendhal's novel-submissive father in Balzac's novel-and the call for father in Joyce's novel, which is related to the theme of filial piety in China's literature. Finally, we link the misunderstanding of father in Wang Yuanjian's novel Relatives, Zhang Chengzhi's yearning for his father in the novel River in the North, the hero who found his father's care by the Yellow River in Zhou Keqin's novel Xu Mao and his daughters, and the indifferent father in Hongfeng's novel Regret for the Past, so as to sort out the development clues of father theme as a product of patriarchal culture and make students understand the evolution law of literary theme itself.
Second, grasp the subject dynamics and expand students' academic horizons.
Since the reform and opening-up, with the ideological emancipation movement and bringing literary theories out of order, a large number of western trendy literary theories have been introduced, which has had a strong impact on China's modern and contemporary literary creation and theoretical research, triggered profound changes and brought many new topics and methods. In fact, many literary criticism methods, such as sociology, narratology, feminist criticism, structuralism, myth-archetypal criticism, deconstruction, new historicism and post-colonialism, have been applied to the study of modern and contemporary literature in China. In academic research, people are studying China's modern and contemporary literature in an all-round, multi-faceted and multi-perspective way of thinking, but these achievements have not been fully described and applied in classroom teaching. In class, we fully absorb these latest academic achievements and explain these new theories and methods to students according to the course situation. Because a critical method also represents a literary concept and critical vision. The introduction of new theories and methods will not only help students to understand the rich implications of China's modern and contemporary literature in a broader theoretical background, but also greatly enhance their interest in learning. After different criticism methods, there are different masterpieces, and famous writers in literary history are often questioned. However, with the renewal of ideas and the change of methods, people can rediscover its value. Popular literature, for example, was not artificial before, and the history of literature was hardly involved. But now, many researchers believe that the relationship between new literature and popular literature is not hostile, but complementary. For another example, Shen Congwen, a writer who loves primitive customs, is often excluded from the history of literature by traditional analytical methods. However, from another angle, from the perspective of archetypal criticism, we can find the folk archetypal images implied in his works, and appreciate why the works such as Border Town and Border Town have gained artistic charm beyond time and space restrictions. So is Zhang Ailing. Her desolate life legendary novels are often ignored as ordinary novels in the era of advocating writing the flying edge of life. However, if we observe and analyze Zhang Ailing's novels according to the feminist literary criticism theory, we can find the value and significance of her novels. 【LunWenNet。 Com, paper net]
Although she writes mostly about family and marriage, she doesn't write major political themes, but she is by no means a so-called street novel. With profound insight and outstanding talent, she gave a comprehensive description of women under the oppression of patriarchal culture, revealing the poor and disgusting personality level of women as a vulnerable group. The works of avant-garde writers such as Yu Hua, Can Xue and Ge Fei need to be based on existentialism theory to show the value and significance of the text. Most avant-garde writers are obsessed with writing violence and death in their texts, but the violence and death they write are different from the previous literary descriptions. In avant-garde literature, violence has become a common life landscape, and death is also a relaxed daily event. The ultimate goal of avant-garde writers in describing violence and death in this way is to reveal the absurdity and nothingness of existence. This kind of narration is very new to students and the classroom effect is very good. Of course, in the process of describing these new theories and methods, we should be very cautious. We should not blindly "sell" them, but try not to talk about those that we can't understand, that are not in line with China's national conditions and that are not closely related to the analysis of China's modern and contemporary works.
Third, improve teaching methods and improve classroom teaching effect.
As early as 2002, we tried to make the teaching content into courseware for teaching. Multimedia teaching not only saves time, increases the amount of classroom teaching information, but also greatly improves students' learning enthusiasm. The teaching practice in recent years shows that the rational use of multimedia teaching methods is one of the very effective means to improve the teaching effect: First, it can simplify the complicated event narration. For example, the plot of the novel Fortress Besieged is based on Fang Hung-chien's life track. Because of its complicated experience, it takes a lot of time to describe it. Using multimedia courseware to draw a chart of its experience is clear at a glance, avoiding complicated narration. This is not only effective for general complex narrative works, but also particularly practical for combing the clues of literary history. Second, the text of relevant background materials can be visualized. In introducing the author, quoting materials, comparing, etc. , involving a large number of written blackboard books, directly provided to students in the form of courseware, supplemented by simple narration, can save effective teaching time. For example, Lao She is a representative writer of civic literature. In the history of modern literature, few writers are as obsessed with the appreciation of Beijing culture and the middle and lower classes who died in it. He constructed a vast "citizen world" with most of his novels, covering almost all aspects of modern citizen class life. Considering that most students in our school grew up in a small town in the south, it is really difficult to fully understand such a rich Beijing flavor culture in Lao She's works only through the interpretation of novels. Therefore, in the teaching process, I edited some fragments of the films Camel Xiangzi and Divorce in the multimedia courseware, which greatly shortened the time and space distance between students and authors, increased their understanding of the works, and played a good teaching effect. Thirdly, it can visualize the poetic image of beautiful songs. In poetry teaching, the images of some poems are vague and implicit, and even difficult to express. Using multimedia to turn obscurity into clarity and implication into intuition can stimulate imagination and reduce classroom language. For example, when teaching Xu Zhimo's "Farewell to Cambridge", you can first show students a few pictures of Cambridge in different modes, and dub them loudly to guide students to feel the feelings of "inseparable" implied in the poem, and then launch "Whether", a sad song with parting, which not only makes students feel sad,
Fourth, strengthen extracurricular reading and emphasize the cultivation of appreciation ability.
Cooperate with classroom teaching with extracurricular reading, and deepen the understanding of extracurricular reading content with classroom teaching. There are many writers' works involved in China's modern and contemporary literature, so it is far from enough to teach them in a limited time in class. In order to maximize the effectiveness of classroom teaching, we must combine extracurricular reading with classroom teaching, and use extracurricular reading to cooperate with classroom teaching. Then, how to combine extracurricular reading with classroom teaching? We mainly do it from two aspects. First of all, we compile the extracurricular reading bibliography and teaching guide, put forward clear requirements for extracurricular reading content, and require students to complete a certain amount of reading notes. Secondly, in the specific teaching organization, at the end of each chapter, we should design problems related to the teaching content and outside the classroom teaching. After the special teaching class, students are generally required to draw up their own topics, consult materials and write small comments and papers related to the teaching content. For example, after the lecture on "Yu Prose", we asked the students to express their opinions and express their views on Yu Prose, and the students were quite active. This kind of homework can not only cultivate students' habit of active reading, but also help improve students' literary aesthetic ability and critical ability, which can be described as killing two birds with one stone. In order to improve their teaching ability, teachers' students can also write their own teaching plans in appropriate chapters. Generally, it is "teachers divide chapters-students consult materials and prepare lessons after class-students write lesson plans-teachers check and guide (multimedia courseware is needed)-students give lectures on stage-students give feedback on teaching feelings-teachers and students analyze gains and losses together". This teaching process not only benefits students, but also helps teachers to review their own teaching and improve teaching methods in the process of listening to lectures and guiding students, so as to learn from each other's strengths. In short, in the teaching process of modern and contemporary literature in China, we should always remember that classroom teaching is to deepen, guide, solve doubts and answer questions, and extracurricular reading is the source of expanding, supplementing and extending thinking and knowledge.
the second
Reportage, as an independent style, what are its stylistic features? Through diachronic investigation, we find that different periods have different understandings and different people have different views. We can appreciate the change and development of this style through these differences, so as to understand and grasp this basic problem dialectically.
I. Representative views of 1930 s
(1) Hu Feng: Reportage is the sister of essays.
Hu Feng published an essay entitled "About Sketch and Others" in February 1935. Some critics believe that this is an important paper that marks the shift of China's reportage theory from translation reporting to independent research. Some critics have a unique understanding and interpretation of reportage, a new style. In this paper, the author calls reportage "sketch". "Why can Sketch develop so fast? It is said that because the author and readers are in a very poor and busy situation, this style best corresponds to them. " "The ever-changing ripples caused by the drastic social changes in the past decade have made it impossible for writers to express their anatomy and attitude towards social phenomena in special forms from time to time, in addition to creating comprehensive models on a large scale, and to resist all numbness and turbidity with their own sharpness." Hu Feng equates reportage with modern essays and thinks that they are "sisters". Of course, there are similarities between "sisters". They have "the same social foundation and the same social significance". They were born in "dramatic social life", are "combative literary genres" and "reflect and criticize the ever-changing daily accidents in society more vividly and quickly", which are the same social functions of the two. He thinks that essays are "a kind of literary essays" and essays (reportage) are "a kind of literary essays". The difference between the two is that' essays' reflect those living social phenomena from the theoretical side, and even make people gain an image understanding, while' essays' convey or imply criticism of social phenomena from the image side. The significance of "social criticism" ranks first in Hu Feng's understanding of reportage. He used words with similar meanings in many places, such as "anatomy", "militancy", "sharpness" and "resistance". The realization of criticism must be based on the "image side" report that is "incomplete and unimaginative". It has three characteristics:
(1) It doesn't write fictional stories and comprehensive models. Its hero is a real person, and its events are real events.
(2) Its hero is not an ancient temple, not a landscape, not a beautiful moon, but a person at the center of social phenomena.
(3) Don't describe irrelevant details, but grasp the points that can show the essence.
Hu Feng also made a profound discussion on the literariness of reportage. In On the Literary Form of a Battle in War, he told the author of reportage to "grasp special points from complex phenomena", "reflect the whole from a special side, and pay attention to events that particularly excite us in common phenomena". For example, he said, "It is better to work hard than to describe in detail the luggage piled up at the station and the crowded crowd. This is the perspective and means of literature-typicality and particularity, which is related to people's emotions (using "mind to paint the scenery"). This has its own "expressive power of works".
To sum up, Hu Feng's understanding of reportage is: (1) persisting in social criticism; (2) News quality based on authenticity, sociality and importance; (3) Expressive literary quality.
(2) Mao Dun: "It is one of the departments of literature together with novel".
Mao Dun's answer to "What is Reportage" is reflected in the article "About Reportage". This article was published in "Zhong Liu" magazine 65438-0937.
The main nature of "reporting" is to report an event in life to readers immediately. The subject matter is an event that happened, so "reporting" has a strong news nature; But it is different from newspaper news because it must be completely visualized. It is necessary to vividly describe the environment and people where the "event" happened, so that readers can experience it personally and understand what the author wants to express from this concrete picture of life. A good "report" should have all the artistic conditions of a novel, such as characterization, environmental description and atmosphere rendering. But "report" is different from "novel". The former focuses on an actual "event" and timely "instant" reporting, while the latter focuses on how much life experience the writer has accumulated, and draws a conclusion through research and analysis, which has been fully visualized through the power of creative imagination. The stories of "novels" are mostly fictional, but they should be well-founded and convincing. The "report" must be a true event.
In Mao Dun's eyes, reportage is such a style: it has news value-it reports real events related to "social and political issues" in life immediately, and cannot be fictional; It is literary-"it must have all the artistic conditions of a novel"; It insists on sharp criticism-it regards "dissection" and "correct and sharp criticism and reflection" as "the main tasks of writers". "The acquisition of news distinguishes reportage from the general literary style; The setting of literariness (image) separates reportage from news style; The emergence of criticism makes reportage independent from the general news style and literary style. This style is a unique reportage.
Looking back at history, the most prominent and consistent understanding of the stylistic features of reportage in the 1930 s is its social critical spirit. Keesh said that reportage is "a dangerous literary style", and "danger" comes from this ruthless criticism. Compared with other literary styles, reportage requires the author to shoulder a sense of mission and responsibility, and also needs the author to directly present reality, participate in and even intervene in life. Therefore, reportage writers should also have courage and insight. When introducing Ji Xi's works and promoting reportage as a new style, China writers first recognized this strong fighting spirit and social criticism spirit. It has become the value orientation and criterion of reportage, and it is also the most important stylistic feature and writing standard of reportage. Secondly, news, insisting on truth and refusing fiction; Quick response, focusing on timeliness. However, there are different understandings about literariness. For example, Hu Feng emphasized literary thinking and literary expression. Mao Dun, on the other hand, demanded that reportage be standardized by the norm of "novel". In the article "About Reportage", I emphasized "all artistic conditions" of "novel essential" three times. Mao Dun is a novelist, and it is understandable for him to say so (he holds the same view as novelist Gorky). Theoretically, it may be meaningful to promote the artistic aesthetic realm of reportage and make it break away from the pure news style as soon as possible, but its limitation is that replacing the literariness of reportage with "novel" norms will undoubtedly force and weaken the connotation of literariness, thus hindering the growth and development of reportage literariness. At the same time, it also shows a lack of mature understanding of the stylistic nature of reportage.
Second, the words of 1970s
According to Henry Hui Wang's point of view, China reportage in the1950-70s was in the strong normative field of national ideology, and its development was guided by political culture. In the first seventeen years, there was a change from battlefield reporting (to resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea) to on-the-spot reporting (to the construction of socialist industrial economy) and rural reporting (to changes in life). Among them, reportage about people (advanced collectives and heroes) flourished, which continued the Yan 'an literary tradition and focused on "singing praises". The reportage of "intervening in life" once appeared, but it was also a flash in the pan. With the advent of the anti-rightist struggle, a large number of new and old writers who have made important contributions to proletarian revolutionary literature and art have been persecuted, and the social critical spirit of reportage is absent. Then, the climax of the Great Leap Forward created waves of "pseudo-reportage" bubbles; In the decade of the Cultural Revolution, reportage even fell into a trough. In addition to three years without works, he finally became a tool of "conspiracy literature" (such as the battle of Xisha, wings of the earth, etc. ).
This period was dominated by "revolutionary discourse" and "great unity" and existed and developed in the form of "main melody melody". It not only guides creation, but also guides the summary of the theory of creation. Understanding the stylistic features of reportage is no exception. The interpretation of Ci Hai (1979) can be expressed as: "Reportage, one of the literary genres, is a kind of prose. It is also a general term for sketches, close-ups and so on. Directly based on real people and stories with typical significance in real life, after appropriate artistic processing, they are quickly and timely displayed to serve the current politics and are known as the' light cavalry' in literary creation. "
This entry provides us with the following information:
(1) The "spirit of social criticism" inherent in reportage completely disappeared, and it was replaced by the consciousness of "serving the current politics".
(2) the authenticity is weakened. If we "serve the current politics", we can't escape the distortion of the objective truth by "appropriate artistic processing". Some scholars say that 17 reportage "follows a basic typicality requirement", and "typicality includes two processes: one is trade-off and the other is exaggeration. The standard of choice can only be "politics" that serves it, and exaggeration is a necessary "rhetorical device" that serves it well.
(3) the style is not independent. Reportage is only a kind of prose. The name of reportage "short stories, close-ups and so on" once disappeared and was replaced by "close-ups" (influenced by the Soviet Union). There is no distinction between news dissemination and reportage, and there are many phenomena that the same work belongs to various categories. For example, who is the cutest person in Class 61, and the example of Jiao, secretary of the county party committee, and so on. , which was included in Selected Works of News Communication (news style) and Selected Works of Prose Features (literary style).
Third, cognition at the end of the 20th century.
At the end of the 20th century, the political context was rewritten. Since Goldbach's conjecture, there has been an inspiring "positive line" in reportage, which has created a brilliant century. The creative phenomenon is reflected in the understanding of the stylistic characteristics of reportage, and there have been three major changes:
Style independence.
At the symposium on reportage held in Wuhan Normal University from 65438 to 0979, one of the achievements was to confirm that reportage is a "unique and independent literary style" and an "independent literary genre". Huang Gang said: "Reportage is a unique and independent literary style, which is very combative and has the characteristics of reporting the times. It takes specific news content as the theme and the image of words as the means"-it is a newly developed "independent literary genre" in modern literature. This view has been affirmed by academic circles.
There are three manifestations of independence: first, it is positioned as a "marginal genre". Reportage is the product of the combination of news and literature, and it is a marginal genre. "Marginal style with both news and literature features has both news and literature value." Now we see that not only news and literature are combined, but also sociology, history, culturology, statistics and so on. "Edge style" is an accurate positioning. The second is the reportage independence award. During the period of 1980, three literary awards (novellas, reportage and new poems) were held in China, with 80 winning works and 30 reportage. This is the first award of reportage, which indicates that it is "neck and neck" with other literary categories. "It is no longer something that lingers between news and literature, and often can't find an accurate position, but as an independent and mature literary style, it flourishes in our literary world. It is fully qualified to keep pace with literary forms such as novels, poems and even dramas and compete with each other. " Third, the creative team is relatively professional. Since the birth of reportage, the authors are basically part-time, including journalists, novelists, poets, playwrights and essayists. During this period, although part-time workers continued to exist, writers specializing in reportage appeared, such as Lu Guang, Qiao Mai, Chen Zufen, Meng Xiaoyun, Zuwei and Jia Lusheng. , have excellent performance.