"how to establish the evaluation system of network literature" is not only difficult, but also very important and urgent to be solved. In recent years, I have been in contact with network literature for a long time, and I am no stranger to network literature, but as far as my inner feelings are concerned, I am still relatively strange to network literature. I have participated in all kinds of online literature awards, and I have always thought that to allow professional literary commentators to participate in the final review is to suppress the characteristics of online literature at the last shut. let our eight judges highlight the tradition of online literature and tell them that this is the one who can win the prize (although they care more about the click-through rate than the award). Now it seems that this is not exactly the idea. I have been revising my view on the emerging literary trend of "network literature". Although my education, my usual research and teaching work are all concerned with the kind of literature that has been traditional for thousands of years, telling students how to appreciate, how to identify, and how to make different works into a whole to serve the writing of literary history.
There is no doubt that we should not ignore the new style of network literature. the new literary style may contain the possibility of new literature, which is confirmed by the history of literature. In addition, the values of society and life are so rich and diverse that they are not the literary history, literary theory and literary specimens you have studied, but the only correct ones in the world.
Starting from an online novel
The novel Golden pupil, which has 1314 chapters and about 4.5 million words, has been written for 18 months, with an average of more than 240000 words per month and more than 8000 words updated every day. Compared with the spread of literary works on the paper media, this is a very astonishing data. This is a new mode of literary production, dissemination and reading. The reading of network literature can not be like traditional literature. The reading of traditional literature can concentrate on reading a novel with hundreds of thousands of words in one week's spare time, and the impression is also more concentrated. This is not the way to read online literature. You must follow the author's upload frequency. The author has been writing for 18 months, and readers must go up and read thousands of words every day for 18 months, spend an hour reading the uploaded work before going to bed at night, and tell a post that it is well written before going to bed. Reading has become a part of daily life and is no longer the object of education and research. As I use traditional reading to concentrate on reading, and there is no paper version, my eyes are really suffering.
The protagonist of the incomparably long novel Golden pupil is a young man named Zhuang Rui, who works as a clerk in a pawnshop and an amateur treasure appraiser. He was injured by an accident, and his injured eyes developed a special power called "aura". This kind of "aura" can identify jewelry and cure diseases. For example, when her mother broke her waist, Zhuang Rui stared at her injured waist with his eyes. Her mother had a chilly sensation in her waist, and her waist injury would be cured. For example, a piece of jewelry, he can tell the true from the false by the "aura" response at a glance. The whole novel is about Zhuang Rui traveling around the country and relying on his "bright" eyes to identify the process of jewelry. There are antique jewelry markets in every city in the country, such as Liulichang and Panjiayuan in Beijing, Yunzhou Antique City in Shanghai, Changshou Road in Xiguan in Guangzhou, Zhu Sparrow Street in Xi'an, many temples in Lhasa and other ethnic minority areas, and the antiques in each place are different. The protagonist walks around as a traveler, connecting all the stories that appear in the process of identifying antiques and antique transactions in each place. There will be wonders in every place, and there will be enough for you to write and read. In addition, most people are not familiar with the knowledge and interest of the antique trading industry, as well as all kinds of thrillers in jewelry trading, which are also very attractive to read. and as long as the chain of "production-circulation-distribution" continues, you can write endlessly.
However, the network novel is also a novel, and the network literature is also literature, which should meet the basic requirements of the novel or literature. In particular, the "novel" in the modern sense not only refers to the "story" with emphasis on the plot. Story is an ancient concept, how well the story is told, we need to analyze its language, details, plot, layout, meaning and so on.
The "literariness" of Network novels
The so-called "literariness" is a basic problem in the internal study of literature. it studies the elements of literature and its composition. The first is the question of language. The language of the novel "Golden pupil" is very good, according to the requirements of traditional literature, narrative fluency, no reading barriers, detailed description and narrative control are done well, in line with the reading expectations of more audiences. The language standard of the novel, especially the novel, is very different from that of poetry. The novel is a "mixed language world" (Bakhtin). The "language" used by writers is also the "language" used by all people. Both "good guys" and "bad guys" use it. Ordinary people use it, so do writers, and everyone uses it differently. The characters of the novel appear in the novel in different identities, such as a nagging person who speaks very much in the novel, and a person who is well-bred and incisive in language, who also speaks brilliantly in the novel. Therefore, in the face of this novel language as a "miscellaneous world", we can not judge whether the novel language is good or bad according to the local language style. the key is how to structure these "miscellaneous words" in the novel. whether it meets the requirements of the overall structure and meaning. In other words, language and detail description serve the setting of the plot. Therefore, the plot setting is also very important. The plot setting of the novel Golden pupil is very good, and the plot transformation ability is also very strong. The question is, since the language is very good, the plot setting ability is very strong, and the story is very attractive, can I use traditional literary standards to measure it and think that it is a first-class writer and work in contemporary traditional literature? There's no doubt it's not that simple. Because the novel also has the structural requirements of "narrative layout" and "overall layout", the former can be called "small structure" (narrative structure), and the latter can be called "big structure" (meaning structure).
First of all, let's talk about the concept of narrative structure. Traditional writers pay great attention to narrative layout, that is, "what to write first", "what to write later", "where to write more" and "where to write less". The deep value pointed to by the layout structure is in line with the basic principles of the evolution of human civilization and social management, that is, the "principle of economy", that is, to convey the greatest value with the least space, such as "winning more with less", "taking points with noodles", "comparing interest with others" and "intertextuality", all point to this general principle, not that I can write wherever I want, and I will write whatever people like. What's more, it cannot be written as a "current account" with an average distribution of time and space. Under the limit of about 150000 words to more than 1 million words, the writer will certainly write more about what he is most interested in and which is closely related to the "overall" value of the novel, and will try his best to control "idle writing". In the production and dissemination of network literature, the important structural problem of traditional "layout" has become no longer a problem. First of all, there is no limit to the space of the work, which makes use of the boundless "cyberspace", including the emerging "cloud space". The second is the reader's freedom in time. Readers make use of the "remaining time" or "game time" which is liberated by the contemporary social productive forces outside the classical "working time". Therefore, the "saving principle" in the structure of narrative layout is almost ineffective here, and writing and reading can be a kind of "dissipative" behavior.
At the same time, the fragility of the above-mentioned "remaining time" or "game time" is highly consistent with the fragmentality and arbitrariness of the narration of network literature, which dispels the requirement of narrative totality in traditional literature. this leads to the following questions: how to treat the "meaning structure" of narrative works? We believe that this is an important yardstick to show the writer's overall view of himself and others, society and the world, otherwise, the small structure of the narrative layout will become disorganized and even incomprehensible. Online novelists do not care much about the concept of "narrative totality". What is totality? For example, what story does A Dream of Red Mansions tell? We should have the ability to speak out the narrative totality of the novel in a few words, and then talk about how it achieves the narrative goal and how to present the narrative purpose. it includes the relationship between language style, detail description, plot setting, characterization and overall structure.
Although different readers have different understanding, discovery and induction of the "narrative totality" of the works, the requirements that make the works have "understandable totality" have not changed, and all require that details and plots have a unified causal relationship in the evolution of time. If there is no such "narrative totality", but a kind of loose and random jumping writing and reading, it will lead to the dispersion of the structure, that is, the non-centrality and uncertainty of the narrative meaning. This kind of arbitrary collage of experience fragments in narrative becomes incomprehensible from the point of view of traditional way of thinking and value pursuit. If we ask for the creation of online literature in this way, their writing will collapse and they can only turn to online readers for help. This situation will only increase the rift between literary evaluation and literary communication. Is it necessary to use the standard of large structure mentioned above to require network literature? Without solving this problem, the discussion of "establishing the evaluation system of network literature" will be difficult to continue.
The theoretical problems faced by the new standard
According to the standard of traditional literature, the question of online novels does not lie in the general language and plot setting, but in the "overall layout" or "meaning structure". If we do not intend to make this doubt absolute, then we need to re-discuss the theoretical legitimacy of the "overall layout" or "meaning structure" of traditional literature.
The totality of the narrative structure of the novel is actually a form of narrative style of "anthropocentrism" (which can also include "geocentric theory" and "heliocentric theory"). The world structure model of a single center has given rise to a series of problems, such as the western center in geopolitics, the logos center in language and meaning structure, the human center in the sense of moral practice, as well as male chauvinism center, urban center and so on. The construction of these standards comes from the reinterpretation of Greek and Hebrew traditions by the Western Renaissance, believing that the world has a unique center around which a perfect structure has been formed, and the world has become an object that human beings can grasp and understand. The transformation of this concept from natural science to humanities was not completed until the 18th century (Kant, Descartes, Locke). The concept of modern novel only appeared in the 18th century, which brings the unique personal experience together and becomes the core content of modern novel. The narration of personal experience must form a unified causal relationship in time, and then weave them into the perfect structure of "center-edge" produced by the centripetal action of gravity. As a result, the imitation of "perfect culture" in classical literature is replaced by the imitation of "perfect life" in modern literature; the timeless "poetic ideal" in classical novels is replaced by the historical evolution (evolution time) of "human nature reality" in modern novels. The narrative layout is actually the embodiment of "time" elements, and the overall layout is actually the embodiment of "meaning structure". The educational novels, growing-up novels or roaming novels of the 18th century are the representatives of this modern form. The enlightenment literature of the May 4th Movement draws lessons from and inherits this literary standard, which is consistent with the novels of Ba Jin, Mao Dun, Ye Shengtao, Lao she, Lu Ling and so on.
In fact, whether it is the cognitive style of the world or the description of things, the above-mentioned modern meaning or the narrative structure of modern novels (historical narration and its totality) can only be said to be one of many types. We can cite many examples to the contrary, for example: the box frame structure of Arab "1001 Nights", the beaded structure of Japanese "Tale of Genji", the oriental box structure of "five volumes of books" in India, the circular cobweb structure of "Dream of Red Mansions" in China, and so on. The narrative structure of "Yang envy Scholars" (continued Qi Harmony), which comes from Buddhist fables, is a perfect structure of an oriental fantasy world. In addition, there are the "Tree of Life" model in folk narration, the structure of "Krishna hallucinatory Universe" ("Bhagavad Gita"), the brand-new view of time and space in modern physics, Foucault's criticism on the uniqueness of pleasure center, Roland Barte's narrative mode of "Lovers' whispering", Fei Ming's "Biography of Mr. Mo Shu" and "after Mr. Mo Shu takes a plane", Shen Congwen's "long River" and "Border City" and so on.
The intuition of oriental mysticism is far away from our lives, and the cutting-edge achievements of modern science are also far away from our lives. The interpretation principle of the humanities to the world is still in the form of "classical mechanics". Can we break the structural "geocentric theory" and "heliocentric theory" and break the traditional mode of thinking about the cognition and meaning of the world? If possible, the evaluation system of classical literature, including our understanding of the narrative structure of novels, can also be subverted. The first thing that needs to be subverted is the single-centered elite discourse model and its set of rules in the literary evaluation system.
The "meaning structure" models listed above, which deviate from the western central discourse in the past 500 years, are actually opposed to single-center and advocate multi-center. They are reflected in the narrative structure of the novel, that is, the multi-center of narration and the openness of the style. It is only then that we begin to understand why a novel is an "unfinished open style" (Bakhtin), not just an "epic of civil society" (Hegel). Or "the journey of problematic characters in a problematic society to find meaning" (Lukacs). The excellent online novel with folk narrative color may be such an open and unfinished new style. Every part of its narrative is very fine, each segment of the story is the focus of the narrative, each fragment uploaded can set off a small and the most wonderful part, and each work can rise one after another. That is, multi-center, many of the best parts, multi-themes, multiple people, multiple texts and multiple meanings, just like a booming tree, whether the root of the "tree of life" is rooted in the land (realistic). Whether it is stuck in the sky (fantasy) can be regarded as an artistic intuitive capture of the mysterious and diverse world by the public. As Mr. Liu Kuili, an expert in folk literature, said, the life tree of folk narrative has "great vitality" and "mystery". It is a symbol of infinite richness, complexity, regularity and concealment of the internal mechanism of the world.
So far, we have mentioned two deviations of network literature from traditional literature: first, there is no restriction on time and space in the production and dissemination of works, so there is no need to follow the "saving principle" in traditional narration. Second, the overall meaning structure of narrative deviates from the requirements of the overall narrative structure established by western literature since modern times, and presents a diversified and polycentric diffuse structure. In this new model and characteristics of the value judgment, I am not quite sure, the need for a wide range of professional intervention and further research and evaluation.
Specialization of evaluation system and research
The production and dissemination of network literature is an objective fact. First of all, the study of network literature should face this fact, rather than preconceived to change this fact. As some network writers said, network literature is based on the "reader selection mechanism", and its elimination mechanism is also very cruel. The whole process of production and dissemination of network literature has its own particularity, which is different from traditional literature. However, under the appearance of this process of birth and communication, are there any other deep factors besides the click-through rate of the writer's narrative motivation? What kind of narrative mode has a wide range of appeal? How is a huge "production-spread-feeling" common body established? What is its cultural value or significance? All these need to be re-studied. The current basic situation of network literature can be called the stage of "primitive accumulation of capital", and there are still many spaces worth discussing and standardizing, which is the basic motivation of "establishing the evaluation system of network literature".
In addition, any new form of literature and art (including novels, pop music, film and television, etc.) has a natural development process from popularization to classicalization. The so-called "classicalization" is to turn new things and things that no one has talked about at the beginning into things that can be talked about, that is, to invent a set of basic terms to summarize and evaluate it, so as to bring it into the discourse review system of the whole history of the evolution of human civilization. For example, to enter the history of literature, it is necessary to use the language of literary history to talk about it, rather than simply rely on digital things such as printing numbers, click-through rates and so on. The basic idea of the research is to gradually turn to "value judgment" on the basis of "factual judgment", which is also an important goal of "the establishment of network literature evaluation system".
At present, the scale of the researchers of network literature is not commensurate with the scale of the production and dissemination of network literature, and the professional level of research also needs to be improved. Two extreme research postures must be changed: either extremely belittling and ignoring them, or being fascinated by the object of study. One of these two gestures is the unwillingness to face the facts directly, and the other is to directly value the unstudied facts. The first problem faced by the researchers of network literature is the excessive or lack of terms, which leads to the inability of language to reach and capture the object of study. The use of theoretical terms should follow two principles:
First, the principles of screening and application. In order to maintain the historical continuity of the literary evaluation system itself, the terms of traditional literary research and criticism can not be rejected. How to apply them to the network literature evaluation, not every traditional literature term can be directly transferred to the network literature evaluation, some useful, some do not work, need to be carefully screened. In the face of novels with the color of "floating world painting" on the Internet, "typical characters in a typical environment" are not very effective; in the face of online novels that focus on expressing women's feelings, "magnificent historical pictures" are not very effective; in the face of fantasy novels, "approachable works" are not very effective. But at the same time, some terms, such as the language style, plot pattern, narrative layout and overall structure of the internal study of literature, can be used. This is the principle of "screening and application" of traditional literary terms.
Second, the principle of accuracy and effectiveness of terminology innovation. In the face of new literary objects, in addition to screening and using traditional literary terms, there should also be inventions and innovations of new terms. Most of these new terms come from network literature, which are very targeted, but they are also complex and numerous. It needs to be accurate and effective when choosing. First of all, it is necessary to judge the facts, what it is, what many literary critics are doing at this stage, and then to enter the value judgment, what is its significance. The invention of new terms should be accurate and effective, which I call the validity principle of terminology innovation.
How to study the new and complex fact of network literature and finally establish a scientific evaluation system is a complex system engineering, which needs multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary cooperation. The interdisciplinary structure should include experts in three main academic fields: first, experts in traditional literature, including Chinese classical literature, modern Chinese literature and foreign literature, on the one hand, because it is a member of the "family of writers". Need to carry out literary research, on the other hand, it often "traverses". The second is the experts of folklore, folklore, literary anthropology and sociology. Because the network literature is different from the traditional literature, it deviates from the discourse of "modernity" (anthropocentrism) in the structural way, and the "man" in the novel is polysemous, including "natural person", "man of species", "man of group", "man of God", and often appears "atavistic impulse". In the way of narration, it often has a strong color of folklore and folklore. The third is the experts of communication, media culture and symbolic economics. Network literature is different from popular and popular best-selling paper books. First of all, it spreads as a text symbol in the online virtual space, and the whole process of production and dissemination is closely related to capital operation. These three areas of knowledge should be integrated and integrated. Only in this way can we turn the study of network literature from factual judgment to value judgment.
Author: Zhang Li
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