Folklore, Magic and Realism—An Analysis about the World of Mo Yan’s Novels

Teacher Jin Jin is a researcher of Talents Program in the School of Humanities, Zhejiang University, and a doctoral tutor of Modern Chinese Literature and Culture. Teacher Jin holds concurrent posts of the vice-editor of Journal of The South Seas Society in Singapore and the review of the Singapore College Literature Award. Teacher Jin has made great achievements in modern and contemporary literature, and has unique opinions in many aspects of related fields. This lecture attracted many listeners in admiration of Jin Jin’s fame as well. All seats were occupied in the audiovisual room.

Mo Yan is the first Chinese writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature and one of the most famous contemporary writers in China. This lecture was to analyze Mo Yan’s full-length novelistic world and his psychology of creation, and to interpret the internal and external causes of his award mainly from three angles of “folklore”, “magic” and “realism”. Meanwhile, a comparison of Mo Yan was made with several contemporary writers at the same epoch to show the creation achievements of contemporary literature, and explore the dilemma of realism in contemporary China and the new development direction of Chinese realistic creation in the new age.

Beginning with “folklore”, Teacher Jin described the unique characteristics of “folk consciousness” as one of the three consciousnesses of official consciousness, elite consciousness of the intellectual, as well as folk consciousness. In accordance with the performance video of songs such as Red Sun In the Sky, etc., the typical features of official consciousness were introduced vividly to the audience in order to help listeners to better understand the difference among the three consciousnesses, which aroused strong sympathy and response of the audience at present.

“Realism” was narrated from its development history. In addition, this lecture also described the distinct characteristics of survival pictures of Chinese rural society since the late Qing Dynasty reflected by Mo Yan’s works in details from a content point of view. By quoting the selection of the Herbivorous family, the concept of “magic” and “magical realism” was introduced to the audience. The impact and feelings of “magic” characteristic was brought to audience intuitively by examples. The introduction of characters such as grotesque realism, original ecological description, misplaced square and the carnival of language, absurd theme, meta-fictional narratives, folk narrative, “religious” plot, etc., provided audiences with more intuitive experience for Mo Yan’s works.

Teacher Jin also put forward a academic view that “In the past thirty years, Chinese literature from the late Qing Dynasty has been in the best stage of the development”. In addition, by enumerating the Chinese literary writers and their representative works close to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, audiences got to know the development trend and achievements of Chinese literature in recent decades, and were recommended about several excellent literary works with high readability as well.

In this lecture, through a variety of forms such as video, pictures, text selections, etc., Teacher Jin exhibited the distinctive features of Mo Yan as well as modern and contemporary literary works to the audience comprehensively. The appeal of “It is better to view Chinese literature than to act as a onlooker of Mo Yan’s works” promoted the audience to ponder deeply. Listeners to the scene benefited a lot from the following interactive activities of questions and answers as well.

Cultural volunteers of Zhejiang Library: Lin Liting