21st Century Chinese Literature Series 2005 Middle Fiction

Author: Han Zhongliang, Editor-in-Chief
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-01-27
Features: The flourishing of the creation of mid-length novels and the maintenance of literary quality have also promoted the development of their publication. Visionary publishers have been competing to focus on this field, with selections of mid-length novels increasing year by year. This is highly beneficial for the development of mid-length novels, but it has become increasingly challenging for selectors. Mid-length novels have become a literary landscape of this era, demonstrating the high level of contemporary literature and an undeniable literary quality. They are moving, romantic, profound, and natural. In terms of art, they are more mature, and in their overall form, they distinctly differ from their darker counterparts, bringing an unprecedented sense of optimism. After literature has been declared dead countless times, discussing the end of literary classics seems no longer sensational. Indeed, as popular culture has become the primary form of cultural expression in the present, trapping and permeating everyone, this cultural form has seemingly become the sole or inexhaustible source of meaning and joy. On the other hand, since the 1970s in developed countries and the 1990s in mainland China, the boundaries between high culture (including literature) and popular culture have been increasingly blurred, with a trend of mutual compatibility or compromise forming an unspoken understanding or agreement. From mutual hostility and suspicion to mutual imitation and borrowing, this has become widely known. Particularly, some creators of high culture have also engaged in the production of popular culture due to various understandable reasons, their dual identities confirming the existence of compatibility and compromise between the two cultures in extreme and typical ways. The stern faces of cultural elites are being replaced by humility; meanwhile, some producers of popular culture, having accumulated cultural capital in the grassroots, have also turned to shaping their identities as cultural elites.