Article

Name: The Image of the Motherland in the Works of Xiao Hong (Based on the Material of the Novel “The Tale of the Hulan River”)

Authors: Feng Yishan

Changchun University, Changchun, China

In the section The Plot in Literature and Folklore

Abstract:

The relevance of the study is based on the interest of modern literary studies to the study of conceptual images of national literatures, formed by the basic universals of ethnic consciousness and found themselves in a situation of frontier coexistence and interethnic interaction. The study relies on biographical, cultural-historical and structural-semantic methods in analyzing Xiao Hong’s texts. The author uses cultural-historical, biographical, translation and immanent analysis methods. The author concludes that the image of homeland in Xiao Hong’s works is conditioned by the influence of the writer’s childhood impressions, her memories of her small homeland – the town of Hulani, as well as by Xiao Hong’s innovative desire to capture the heritage of the feudal past in the minds of ordinary people of the North-east. Intuitively finding ways of socio-cultural and socio-psychological analysis, Xiao Hong meticulously recreates the unsightly aspects of life of the Chinese of the early 20th century, living in the captivity of traditional feudal orders and ideas. But the subject organization of the narrative – lyricization coupled with autobiography – explicates the basic ethnic notions that determine the Chinese attitude to their homeland and native land. “Hulan” is the first ethnographic and at the same time deeply patriotic work of the Chinese writer, who revolutionized the artistic thinking of China in the first half of the 20th century.

Keywords: Chinese prose, image of homeland, northeastern Chinese writers, Xiao Hong, Hulan, ethnic consciousness, artistic ethnography

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