China's culture for thousands of years is full of essence. There are countless literary creations, and there are waves of academic circles. Is there an unknown field in literature?

Title: Experiencing Folk Literature and Inheriting National Memory

Author: Chen Jianxian, male, Han nationality, born in Macheng City, Hubei Province, in June 1954. At present, he is a professor at the College of Literature of Huazhong Normal University, a doctoral supervisor, the deputy director of the Center for Folk Culture Research of Huazhong Normal University, and the head of the master's degree guidance group of folklore. His main research fields are mythology and folklore in China. His main works include Gods and Heroes-the Motif of Ancient China Myth, Myth Interpretation-Exploration of the Analysis Method of Motif, Belief in the Jade Emperor, Types and Distribution of Flood Myth in China, etc. His translations include Dictionary of Cultural Symbols in China, World Folklore, Comparative Study of Chinese and Western Narrative Literature, etc.

a

late at night on March 1th, 1926, Mr. Lu Xun wrote the words A Chang and Shan Hai Jing on the manuscript paper. Then light a cigarette, and it seems that the "yellow, fat and short" female worker emerges from the smoke, the countryman who "likes to earnestly observe and whisper something to people, and also sticks up his second finger, shaking it up and down in the air, or lighting his opponent's nose", and that "in summer, when she sleeps, she stretches out her feet and hands and puts it in a' big' word in the middle of the bed". Mr. Lu Xun wrote a quick book, which seemed to be his childhood again. When he heard A Chang telling him the legend of long hair, he told him that he must say "Grandma, congratulations" as his first sentence when he woke up on the first day of the first month of the first month, and he said to him, "Brother, I bought you a picture of the Three Humming Classics" ... When he wrote "The kind and dark mother earth, I wish to cherish her soul in your arms"

As the most famous writer of new literature in China, Mr. Lu Xun has been read by countless people in his life. Why does he miss this ordinary village woman so deeply? What does Mr. Lu Xun really want to tell us in this memoir?

In fact, A Chang and Shan Hai Jing is Mr. Lu Xun's own literary "root-seeking". He realized that it is ordinary rural women like Chang Ma who inherit the collective memory of the nation and sow literary seeds to children like him. So in a sense, it can be said that without Ah Chang and Shan Hai Jing, there would be no Lu Xun as a writer.

The things that Lu Xun was instilled by his eldest mother in his childhood are called "folklore" and "folk literature" in academic circles today. Folklore is a life culture created, passed down and enjoyed by a national collective, while folk literature is a language art passed down from mouth to mouth in their daily life. From the perspective of literary history, "folk literature" is a literary tradition that is collectively owned by a social group and passed down from generation to generation. It is the collective memory of this group and "the faithful, frank and spontaneous expression of the people's soul" (in Laffargue). A nation cannot stand on its own feet among the nations of the world without its own ethnic memory. If a writer is good at learning folk literature and expressing and inheriting his ethnic memory in his works, it will undoubtedly be easier for him to win the popularity of ethnic groups and attract the interest of readers with different cultural backgrounds.

Second

In the winter of p>1917, after a heavy snowfall, Peking University professors Liu Bannong and Shen Yinmo were walking along the North River. Liu Bannong suddenly said, "There are also good articles in ballads. Why don't we collect them?" Shen Yinmo said, "That's a good idea. You go to work out a way, and we ask Mr. Cai to collect it in the name of Peking University. " The next day, Liu Bannong drew up the articles of association, Mr. Cai Yuanpei read it again, and then handed it over to the official document office for printing 5, copies, which were distributed to the provincial government schools. Since then, one craze after another has sprung up in modern China, and China literature has added a new style-folk literature.

After Peking University's Collection of Modern Ballads was published, many students contributed, and Peking University Journal selected one song every day, with a total of 148 songs published. By the winter of 192, professors in Peking University realized the important value of folk songs, so they set up a folk song research society. In December 1922, the Ballad Research Society began to publish Ballad Weekly. The publication written by Zhou Zuoren said:

There are two purposes for this association to collect ballads: one is academic, and the other is literary. We believe that the study of folklore is indeed a very important undertaking in today's China. ..... Ballad is an important information in folklore, so we compile it for special study. This is the first purpose. ..... In this academic data, and then selected by the eyes of literary criticism, compiled into an anthology of national voices. ..... So this kind of work is not only praising the hidden glory now, but also causing the development of national poetry in the future; This is the second purpose.

Ballad Weekly published 97 issues on June 28th, 1925. She announced the emergence of folk literature and art as a modern discipline. The object of this discipline is not the writer's personal creation, but the literary works created and passed down by a national collective, such as myths, epics, legends, folk stories, folk songs, folk rap and folk operas. These works are the heritage of the whole nation. They came from ancient times, always accompanied by national history and people's life, and became the symbol of national cultural identity.

Ballad Weekly, published from this new academic perspective, had a great influence during the May 4th Movement. Later, when Mr. Zhong Jingwen, the 9-year-old chairman of China Folk Writers Association, recalled this publication, he said the following words with deep affection: < P > Needless to say, I was very excited when I first came into contact with this small publication. Just saying "like" can never express this feeling. Because in addition to liking it, she also aroused my willingness to collect and record this kind of information and my association with Guo Feng, the classical folk songs of Han, Wei and Northern and Southern Dynasties. I immediately responded in action. For a time, like a madman, I desperately searched around for folk songs, proverbs and stories. Zhenbi writes critical articles about ballads and contacts with the editorial department of the magazine. I set a direction for my future career as an artist. [1]

The discovery of folk literature not only lit up the life of Zhong Jingwen, a young teacher, and made him grow into the head of Chinese folk literature in the long years, but also lit up the eyes of many other people, including scholars, politicians and writers. They realized the special cultural value of folk literature from different angles, and made efforts to promote the continuous development of China's folk literature and art from different angles.

3

In the history of the development of folk literature and art in China, there were two wonderful speeches with far-reaching influence.

On March 2th, 1928, the famous historian Gu Jiegang gave a speech entitled "Sage Culture and Popular Culture" at Lingnan University in Hangzhou. Mr. Gu said: "The so-called old culture, sage culture is one end, and popular culture is also one end. In the past, we were only allowed to worship the sage culture, but we were not allowed to criticize it. Now we are determined to regard it as an object of study. In the past, we only took the attitude of' smiling at people's culture', but now we have to look at it and study it on an equal footing with sage culture. " He made an impassioned appeal: "We who study history, influenced by the current situation, have a clear will: to break the history centered on the nobility and the history with the sage culture as a fixed way of life, but to expose the history of the whole nation." [2] Mr. Gu's speech inherited the spirit of the May 4th Movement and expressed the cultural consciousness of modern intellectuals for national folk literature. Until today, the folk complex of intellectuals in China is still in the same strain. In recent years, the protection movement of intangible cultural heritage was initiated by intellectuals first, and then supported by the government and responded by the people.

On May 23rd, 1942, Mao Zedong gave a concluding speech after listening to the discussion of artists for more than 2 days. He pointed out that literary and artistic work should first solve two fundamental problems: for the masses and how to serve them. He pointed out that some people are unwilling to serve the masses, they don't love their feelings and gestures, and "don't love their budding literature and art (wall newspapers, murals, folk songs, folk stories, etc.)". Mao Zedong sharply criticized: "Their soul is still a kingdom of petty-bourgeois intellectuals." When talking about how to serve the masses, Mao Zedong pointed out that "there was a mineral deposit of literary and artistic raw materials in people's lives, which is a natural thing and a rough thing, but it is also the most vivid, abundant and basic thing; At this point, they dwarf all literature and art, and they are the inexhaustible source of all literature and art. " Mao Zedong called on intellectuals to learn from workers, peasants and soldiers, improve them on the basis of popularization, and popularize them under the guidance of improvement. Speech at Yan 'an Forum on Literature and Art set off an upsurge of learning folk literature and art in the liberated areas. Teachers and students from the departments of literature and music of Lu Xun Art College went to the countryside to collect folk songs. Selected Folk Songs in Northern Shaanxi edited by He Qifang, Folk Arts and Artists edited by Zhou Yang, Ding Ling and Ai Qing, and stories such as Pushing the Great Wall with Water, The Best in the World and Landlords and Long-term Workers were published one after another. The publication of wang gui and li xiangxiang by Li Ji, White-haired Girl by He Jingzhi, Marriage of Little Erhei by Zhao Shuli and other excellent works learning folk literature and art forms a peak of the development of folk literature and art in China.

in the 2th century, China was turbulent and turned upside down. The people took to the center of the historical stage and completely changed the face of China. Folklore, which has been closely associated with people's lives for thousands of years and directly expresses their love, hatred, bitterness, happiness and dream pursuit, has also received great attention accordingly. From the Peking University Ballad Research Association to the investigation of ethnic minorities in the border areas controlled by the Kuomintang, especially the large-scale collection and recording activities of folk literature and art under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the treasure house of Chinese folk literature has become more and more clearly presented to the world. Since 1984, led by the Ministry of Culture, the State Ethnic Affairs Commission and the China People's Association, three collections of folk literature (Collection of Folk Stories in China, Collection of Ballads in China and Collection of Proverbs in China) have been compiled. Zhou Yang is the chief editor, and Zhong Jingwen, Jia Zhi and Ma Xueliang are the chief editors of stories, ballads and proverbs. By 199, China had collected 1.83 million folk stories, 3.2 million ballads and 7.84 million proverbs, with a total word count of 4 billion. A large number of county volumes have been published in many provinces and cities. For example, there are more than 13 kinds of materials printed in Hubei Province in just a few years. Wave after wave of the collection, collation, research and utilization of folk literature and art conforms to the mainstream of the Chinese national self-salvation movement and the ideal of the rise of a great country in the 2th century, and has become a banner of national cultural rejuvenation.

Fourth

The fact that folk literature has spread from generation to generation in a long time and a huge space proves that she has great artistic charm. This charm is mainly reflected in the following aspects:

Folk literature is full of free and joyful spirit. There are fake poems and no fake folk songs. The creation of ordinary people comes from the requirement of human life instinct, which follows Freud's "happy principle" or Bakhtin's "carnival spirit" and is isolated from pessimism. For example, the ubiquitous folk jokes are typical expressions of the spirit of folk joy. Jokes are always full of optimistic attitude towards life, keen observation ability and wise thinking skills. People seek happiness in daily life, and process, produce and consume more happiness through language art. In contemporary society, many genres of folk literature, such as myths, epics, ballads, etc., are shrinking and dying out. Only jokes stand out, as if there is an eternal happy spirit, dancing, laughing, running and dancing in the gray world through wine tables, computer networks and mobile phone short messages.

Folk literature is full of romantic idealism. This idealistic style is manifested in many aspects. From the theme, most folk narrative works have a strong moral tendency. No matter how powerful the evil forces are, the power of good always wins the final victory, and "good is rewarded with good and evil with evil". From the perspective of characters, the positive hero image in folk creation is always perfect, beautiful to the extreme, good to the extreme, and becomes the moral model and spiritual model of the people. From the perspective of artistic conception, real life may be heavy and boring, but the world in folk literature is extremely beautiful. As Engels said in the evaluation of German folk story books: "The mission of folk story books is to make a farmer feel happy, excited and comforted when he comes back at night after hard day work, so that he can forget his fatigue and turn his barren fields into rich gardens. The mission of folk story books is to turn a craftsman's workshop and a tired apprentice's shabby roof cabin into a world of poetry and a palace of gold, and describe his vigorous lover as a beautiful princess. " [3]

Folk literature is full of flying imagination. As we all know, imagination is one of the essential psychological qualities of human artistic creation and scientific invention. In folk fantasy stories, the shackles of the real physical world are completely broken, and the celestial world, the human world, the ghost world and the elf world are integrated in space, and the past, present and future are connected and communicated in time. People communicate directly with God, and everything in nature changes at will. People, God and elves not only permeate each other in spirit, but also transform each other in form. Under the background of time and space with almost no obstacles, people's imagination flies freely, which is of great help to the cultivation of human imagination, especially children's imagination. It is no wonder that Mr. Lu Xun talked about the story of the beautiful snake and the picture of Shan Hai Jing until his later years.

Folk literature is full of philosophy. Belinsky once said: any nation has two philosophies: one is academic, the other is book-based, solemn and magnificent; The other is everyday, homely and ordinary. Whoever wants to describe society must be familiar with these two philosophies, and it is particularly necessary to study the latter. In folk fables, people put philosophy into stories, which makes it easier for listeners to understand and accept. For example, there is a story about "Lift the Donkey", which tells that an old man took his grandson to the market. When he rode the donkey himself, people said that he didn't know how to grieve his grandson. When the grandson rides, people say that they don't respect the elderly; Let's ride together. People say they don't know how to regret animals. Both of them don't ride, and people say they are fools. Some donkeys don't know how to ride. Nothing can be done, so they have to lift the donkey away, but doing so makes people laugh even more. This fable speaks very thoroughly about the philosophy of being independent in doing things. There is also a joke in "Duihua", saying that once upon a time there was a child who often had a runny nose. His father told him to wipe it off and promised to give him one yuan after cleaning it up. Next, my son ran out of the house and soon turned back to ask Lao Tzu for money. Seeing that there were only two red ditches under his son's nostrils, Lao Tzu smiled and said, "I'm kidding you!" " With a snort, the son dripped two snots from his nostrils outside and replied with a smile, "I'm kidding you, too." [4]

This funny scene makes people leave an unforgettable impression on the philosophy of life, which has strong practical significance.

In folk literature, philosophy and poetry can often be perfectly combined. In the quiet virgin forest, the swan in the pool took off its feather coat and became a stunning fairy; The little frog son can not only help his parents do farm work, but also marry the kindest and most beautiful girl by crying, laughing and jumping. When he takes off his frog skin, he becomes a handsome young god. Saved a little white snake from the mouth of the crane, but got a gem that can understand all animal languages …