1980년대 초 중국의 ‘소설 현대화’ 논의와 그 한계― 가오싱젠(高行健)의 『현대소설기교 초탐(现代小说技巧初探)』과 관련 논쟁을 중심으로

Abstract

Gao XingJian(高行健) is a prominent novelist, playwright, literary theorist and painter who fled to France in the late 1980s. The research on Gao XingJian until now has mainly been centered on his plays and novels, and his research on the theory of literature was relatively inadequate. In particular, the “A Preliminary Examination of Modern Fictional Techniques” which was published in China in 1981 and which has produced considerable repercussions, is a text that greatly heightened his reputation as a ‘theorist of modern literature’ and an important text that ignited the discussion of ‘Modernization of Literature’ In-depth consideration is needed. This paper considers the main contents of Gao XingJian's “A Preliminary Examination of Modern Fictional Techniques” and then discusses the limitations and significance of the discussions of various literary scholars in China based on this text. In this study, I tried to show that Gao XingJian's “A Preliminary Examination of Modern Fictional Techniques” is not merely a description of modern Western novel techniques, but rather as a “historical product” of novels, and the subsequent novels have open-mindedness that they can sustain their vitality by abundantly embracing the merits of the alien genres of art. On the other hand, Chinese literary scholars at that time limited the deep and rich implications of this text to the issue of novel content and form, and the Chinese acceptance of contemporary fiction, thereby they have not been able to judge the characteristics of ‘opportunity' and ‘crisis' of modern novels in a balanced way. And in the early 1980s, the limitations of the Chinese literary system led to a failure of the Chinese literary community to effectively cope with the crisis of literature that had arisen since the 1990s.