英文摘要 |
"Written by mainland Chinese writer Chen Zhong-shi, White Deer Plain (1992) is an instrumental contemporary Chinese novel which won arguably the most prestigious Chinese novel award“Mao Dun Literature Prize”in 1997. A trenchant academic critique of this novel is that“Politics”(the narrations of the war between Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party before 1949, and one of the novel’s plot lines) is not seamlessly related to the other parts of the story. They contend that the book will be even more outstanding if all narrations of“Politics”were removed. It does not seem an exaggeration to claim that this argument has gained momentum among scholars. This paper, conversely, seeks to problematize this mainstream idea by challenging the neat separation of“Politics”and other parts of the plot. It alsosuggests that“Politics”is the indispensable soul of this novel. My arguments are twofold: on one hand, this novel has much more to do with the tradition of Historical Novels about Revolutions than it does with New Historical Novels; on the other hand, The Dance of Passion is an uncopyrighted adapted work of this novel, which utilizes allegory as a literary tool to continue to represent“Politics”. Though Mainland-Hong Kong relations replace the details of“Politics”, its core theme is still about“Politics”and evidencing its importance in the novel. Consequently,“Politics”is a mecca for this novel, which even defines its literary status as a model to close the artificial gap between Historical Novels about Revolutions and New Historical Novels." |