Editor's Note
Creation and criticism, such as the wings of a bird, the axle of a car. The development of literary creation is inseparable from the prosperity of literary criticism and the efforts of generations of literary critics. In 1998, the Southern Literary Circle launched the "Critics Today" column, which has introduced more than 100 critics so far. Critics of different personalities speak "my view of criticism" with their sharpness, talent, and agility, and hundreds of articles have accumulated to form a sensitive, vivid, and full of vitality and talent.
Now the China Writers Network has re-launched these articles to share with you, so stay tuned.
Critics of the day
Huang Ping (Filmed in 2011)
Huang Ping, born in 1981 in Liaoning, studied at the College of Philosophy and Society, the College of Literature, and the College of Literature of Chinese Min University of Jilin University, and received a doctorate in literature under the guidance of Professor Cheng Guangwei. Since July 2009, he has been working in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature of the Department of Chinese of East China Normal University, and is now a professor in the department. He is also a visiting researcher of the Museum of Modern Chinese Literature, the responsible editor of the Journal of Modern Chinese, and the nominated judge of the "Chinese Literature and Media Award". He is the author of "Big Times and Small Times", "Post-80s Writing and the Chinese Dream", "Jia Pingwa Novel Manuscript" and so on. He has won the 4th Tang Han Youth Literature Research Award, the 2008 Excellent Paper Award of Contemporary Writers Review, the 2011 and 2013 Excellent Paper Awards of Southern Literature, and the 14th Outstanding Achievement Award of Contemporary Chinese Literature Research. In 2011, he was elected as the "Morning Light Scholar" in Shanghai.
My view of criticism
"Literature" in the "Reformation" Era
Huang Ping
In the epilogue to my doctoral dissertation, I dedicated my final thanks to the library where my hometown had disappeared. For three years in high school, I met Dickens, Hugo, Balzac, Tolstoy, and Pushkin in a library where I was often the only reader. I recall that two scenes recurred, one was standing in the window of the library that was too small to reach into one arm, nervously waiting for the administrator to help me find the next volume of "David Copperfield", and I clearly heard the heartbeat in my uneasiness. Another scene is one night in the third year of high school, a person riding home on a bicycle, hurrying through a mall in the drizzle, trance moments, seeing a homeless man curled up in a tattered cotton coat under the window of the mall. At that moment I silently remembered Dostoevsky's sentence, which I did not know where to write down, "There is another person in the world who is suffering, and he is my brother."
In retrospect, I started with the library where my hometown disappeared and decided to make literature my career. Now it seems that everything in the past may carry the shallowness, exaggeration, self-righteous sense of mission and naïve heroism that are common in teenagers. Hopefully, all this will settle down in a more solid way, and in any case, when I have obtained a doctorate and a teaching position at a prestigious university, I have almost the luxury of living on the basis of ideals, and I have some explanation for the high school students who were nervously wandering in front of the library door and walking through the drizzle with anger.
However, like the "second day of the revolution", the "sense of meaning" conferred by the literature of the past is, frankly, becoming weaker and weaker. If "literature" becomes merely an empty signifier within the system, a dusty and self-deluded cycle, then the supermarket gives me more comfort than the library, which is the mundane, yet the thing. As a result, I have been looking for a possibility to open up my "profession" and "life", which is either a pretentious fascination with drama, or a warm fog in The Mist of Dickens, or a revolutionary Paris of Hugo's passion.
Thanks to everything that is happening outside the study, the real encounter with this era , especially "Shanghai" - 11 years of encounter, highly dramatic or even absurd contemporary life, activated the literary and theoretical resources of the university for ten years, the most worthy of "perusal" of the masterpiece, is the postmodern imagination of the fierce unfolding of contemporary China. From this, I summarize my current and future research work as literary research in the "reform" era, all literature — from Lu Yao to Guo Jingming — is "reform literature", and the real and effective criticism is to truly explain the "Chinese story" in the form of literary analysis. In this sense, my own research work can be said to be "new criticism" + "Foucault", based on the "close reading" that I love, to re-understand the governance technology of the "subject" in contemporary China, and the complex entanglement of this set of "subjects" and "power" must inevitably appear in one narrative or another. The sense of meaning of literary criticism may be based on this, through "formal analysis" to "historical analysis", re-establishing the relationship between "literature" and "history". In the midst of another "great epoch" of "reform", as Belinsky said: "No poet can be great by himself and by himself, he depends neither on his own suffering nor on his own happiness; any great poet is great because his pain and happiness are deeply rooted in the soil of society and history." ”
The article was published in Southern Literature Journal, No. 3, 2011
Critic Impressions
About Huang Ping
Cheng Guangwei
Although Huang Ping is my student, I still have a fate with him. In March 2005, Professor Zhang Fugui of the College of Literature of Jilin University invited me and Professor Chen Xiaoming to attend the defense of my doctoral dissertation there. After the defense, there is naturally an imaginable program, that is, a discussion with the doctoral students and master's students of the Faculty of Letters. I remember that the theme of that day was "May Fourth and Chinese Modern and Contemporary Literature.". This embarrassed me. Although I was studying the history of modern Chinese literature at the doctoral level, I should be able to deal with this topic, but I am very clear about how May Fourth was produced in mainland academic circles, and in recent years I am quite dissatisfied with the "May Fourth View" that people still cling to in the 1980s. I think it is really not interesting to endorse according to the unified caliber, if I say what I really think, it will be difficult for the organizers. Fortunately, Brother Xiaoming's eloquence is first-class, and I am willing to watch from the sidelines, only playing a role in a dragon running set, and I don't know what to say randomly.
After the professors finished their lectures, it was the turn of the graduate students to ask questions. At this time, from the crowd of the conference room, a white-skinned, tall young man stood up, who reported that his name was Huang Ping, and then asked me a few questions about the study of literary history. In a first-class university in China, such as Jilin University, there should be not a few students who can raise the question of cutting-edge meaning and advanced concept to their teachers. However, Huang Ping left a good impression on me that day. First, he is clear-tongued and has excellent expression ability; second, the starting point and foothold of the question are very conscious, unlike some students who are often top-heavy, the problem seems to be very large, but where the foothold is, it is not very clear. With more than twenty years of experience teaching at a university, my first impression is that this is a talent that can be created. After returning to Renmin University, Huang Ping sent me several articles one after another, and I also discussed them with him on the Internet. About a few months later, I wrote to Huang Ping to apply for my doctoral student, and he readily agreed. This is the beginning of our relationship with teachers and students.
Since 2005, I have taught a seminar called "Return to 1980s Literature" for doctoral students majoring in modern and contemporary Chinese literature at the School of Literature of Chinese Min University. Initially, it was only a firepower test, and the topic of discussion changed frequently, in order to experiment with a research angle and method that was suitable for all of us and at the same time could adapt to the literary history research problems that existed in the literature of the 1980s. Huang Ping's current session can be said to be the "golden generation" of my doctoral students at Renmin University (naturally, there are also some outstanding students before and after the class). They are all post-80s boys, in addition to Huang Ping, there are Yang Qingxiang and Bai Liang, several of them, and now they have a small reputation in the domestic contemporary literary research circle. Allow me to stop, in the discussion class, Huang Ping really did not disappoint me, for a period of time, he and Yang Qingxiang sang and harmonized, and actually accumulated a lot of popularity, so that the quality and level of class discussions were greatly improved. In the course of the lecture, Huang Ping was eloquent and emotional, and the result almost overshadowed my master, because the female classmates would scream with appreciation from time to time, like today's fans. From their wonderful analysis and reasoning, I was also inspired, which further enriched and expanded the problems I chose to discuss in the next semester.
Huang Ping has written articles such as "The Occurrence of Literature in the New Era - Centered on today's Magazine" and "Reinventing the "New People":Adjustment and Influence of "Socialist Realism" in the New Era" for the discussion class, which are quite popular among students. But his other two articles deserve more attention. One is "The Entanglement of "Man" and "Ghost":"The Waste Capital" and the "Literature of Man" in the 1980s", and the other is "From "Labor" to "Struggle"—"Inspirational" Reading, Reform Literature and the Ordinary World" "" The former explores the historical position and issues involved in Jia Pingwa's novel "Waste Capital" in the literary transformation of the 1980s and 1990s, and actually breaks the dilemma of literary history formed after the criticism and denial of "Waste Capital" by literary intellectuals in the 1990s. Huang Ping activated some interesting topics that were abandoned due to fierce criticism, and the future "reappraisal of "Waste Capital"" may not be without gains if he continues to do his ideas. As a post-80s doctoral student, Huang Ping actually provided a new perspective on how to re-examine his historical state and knowledge structure during the period of literary transition for the critics who surrounded and suppressed the novel "Waste Capital" and Jia Pingwa himself. Mr. Lin Jianfa, the editor-in-chief of Contemporary Writers Review, is knowledgeable, and he not only published this article decisively, but also awarded the article "2008 Excellent Paper Award" with foresight.
The latter expands on the issue of literary transformation, analyzing how the image of the "laborer" that has been praised by people has been alienated into "labor" after experiencing the restructuring of China's social structure and cultural transformation. They are not from questions to problems, but take the theme and protagonist of a long novel of the writer as the specific object of investigation, and discuss the major issues related to the transformation and direction of the entire contemporary literature from the complex relationship between the characters and history. They arise from the analysis of specific works, rather than from a theoretical work or a trendy topic in the academic world, so when published, they are impressive. Probably this article goes beyond the problem of literary history, some time ago met the writer Li Er, he also specifically mentioned the article "From "Labor" to "Struggle" - "Inspirational" Reading, Reform Literature and the "Ordinary World"" in a tone of great appreciation, this article touched on and deeply studied an important issue encountered in current literary creation. I also feel that this is a considerable harvest of Huang Ping's research on contemporary literary history in recent years, and he has shown his vision and ability to grasp the larger literary history issues through careful thinking, accurate study of works, and the development of problems layer by layer.
The continuous success made Huang Ping quite happy. Huang Pingren is very smart, quick to understand the problem, coupled with the ability to speak eloquently, has a sense of self-sufficient problems, and his development prospects are far better than mine. Especially in 2009, when he graduated with a doctorate, Professors Chen Zishan, Luo Gang, Ni Wenjian and other professors of the Department of Chinese of East China Normal University generously accepted this young man who had just embarked on the academic road, providing him with excellent development space and academic platform. However, he has always behaved very low-key in front of me, always maintaining a modest and cautious revolutionary nature of guarding against arrogance and impatience. This is certainly understandable. When I was younger, didn't I ever get carried away by temporary success? After all, people have a young age. However, according to the gossip from his brother, Huang Ping's enthusiasm and sincerity in helping others have long been famous among his classmates. I also heard in friends in Shanghai that "if you introduce students again, introduce 'good students' like Huang Ping." This is where I feel most happy when I see students gradually achieving academic results.
It is also because he has made a good shot in Jia Pingwo's research, after repeated consultation, we finally determined "Jia Pingwo Novel Theory" as the topic of his doctoral dissertation. I remember the critic Mr. Radar saying that Jia Pingwa was a writer who wrote well, but was not easy to talk about, and this was a very good statement. After Huang Ping had read all of Jia Pingwa's novels very hard, and had almost finished reading the research articles of the past ten years, we suddenly realized that in the various departments of literary history research, the seemingly easiest "study of writers' works" was actually the most difficult. Because when doing literary history research, you can find some problems to prevaricate; or look at the various parts of the work and do as much imaginary play as possible, anyway, even if it does not match the work, the writer has no way. The so-called "study of writers' works" first learns that people discuss the world, step by step, and fight steadily, we must hold on to the background of the times when the writer is creating, and we cannot ignore the intricate entanglements, connections and complex connections between his works and the times. A truly insightful and impactful doctoral dissertation aimed at the "theory of writers" can actually not only greatly promote the stagnant study of writers, but also have the ability to question the existing conclusions of literary history, and ultimately prompt writers and researchers to engage in dialogue.
There is no real pure fiction creation in the world, and the so-called novels are mostly recorded in the historical stories of the author's time. In order to avoid generalizing the problems studied, after discussion, it was decided to discuss the interaction between Jia Pingwa's novel creation and historical context as the basic idea of research. In the framework of the thesis and the specific discussion of each chapter, Huang Ping made great efforts, starting from Jia Pingwa's debut work to the latest works since the new century, and put forward many fresh insights. His essays, in terms of narrative style, adhere to the characteristics of his writing style and one-stop writing. His grasp of the richness of Jia Pingwa's novel creation can also be meticulous and thoughtful, fair and uphold the critical state that is rare for a researcher. What is more worth mentioning is that Huang Ping gave full play to his "close reading" in his papers, taking the work with problems, often starting from a dialogue and a detail to discuss his special historical metaphors; and he found that history often showed its existence in a literary way at some time with a "symptomatic criticism" vision. The reader will be self-aware of this, and there is no need for me to instigate it again.
(Cheng Guangwei, College of Liberal Arts, Chinese Min University)
Read more
Impressions of a Critic
Zhang Yanling, Zhang Ping, editor-in-chief
Writers And Publishers September 2019
My View of Criticism
Guangxi Normal University Press, January 2016
Editor: Deng Jiefeng
Second instance: Liu Ya
Third trial: Chen Tao, Wang Yang