중국 현대문학의 저층서사 속에 나타나는 ‘가족’의 의미에 대한 연구

Abstract

Although it is pretty hard to give the “Subaltern Narration”(or bottom-class narration, subaltern narrative, etc) an immaculate definition, it is widely accepted that this literary phenomenon is something about the “victims of the inequality problems” in contemporary China. The majority of works of Subaltern Narration has been short or middle-length novels, but its spreading into other literal and non-literal cultural territory. This study focuses on three important works of Subaltern Narration, and tries to find out the meaning of the ‘family’ in them. Generally, in Subaltern Narration, ‘family’ gives the main characters a strong motivation, and morally justifies what they do. We can see this particularly in the cases when the main character is a patriarchal male, who sacrifices himself for the sake of the wellbeing of his wife and children. In this kind of novels, the family is very important, not only because it is a personal factor affecting the characters, but also because it is an ideological, social factor enabling the characters to put up with a subhuman labour environment and to continue to provide cheap manpower to the market. Family is not so much natural than as ideological, and Subaltern Narration is a literal category in which the ideological aspect of family can be most profoundly and explicitly shown. I analysed three novels, which are ;Women de Lu by Luo Weizhang, which tries to make the sacrifice for the family an holy thing. Women Fuqi Zhijian by Liu Jiming, which shows the deterioration and demoralization of the meaning of the same sacrifice. Nar by Cao Zhenglu, which shows the conflict and irony between the blood-tied family and the socially expanded family. In these three works of Subaltern Narration, we can see three different approaches toward the family. Critics of Subaltern Narration should be very careful, because the ‘literal’ achievement in general and the particular achievement in Subaltern Narration are two different things.