Scholars explore value of folk literature

Folk literature is an integral part of fine traditional Chinese culture. The CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core attaches great importance to the inheritance and development of fine traditional Chinese culture, and proposes implementing the Project for Transmission and Development of Fine Traditional Chinese Culture, which encompasses a major publishing project, the Treasury of Chinese Folk Literature. 

Contemporary value 

Academia generally regards folk literature as a conceptual category corresponding to written literature, said Chao Gejin, a Member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Folk literature appeared even before the birth of written language. Compared with written literature, folk literature is often completed collectively and anonymously, developing and evolving through intergenerational storytelling. While exhibiting their own laws for development, the two genres have long mutually intertwined and influenced one another. Folk literature, as the artistic creation of the populace, directly and comprehensively embodies the people’s outlooks in life and aesthetic pursuits. As a united multi-ethnic state with cultural diversity, China’s folk literature shows prominent ethnic and regional traits. 

Ethnic and folk identities are central to the value of folk literature, said Wang Dingyong, deputy dean of the College of Humanities at Yangzhou University. Folk literature is deeply connected to folk life. In new cultural constructions, efforts should be made to fully excavate and utilize folk literature’s aesthetic values, values for understanding the world, and life values, in a way that strengthens grassroots social governance, builds contemporary culture, promotes social harmony, and gathers cultural identity. 

Data collection 

Despite great achievements in collecting, recording, and compiling folk literature, these only touch the “tip of the iceberg” of massive folk literature creations, Chao noted. Archival work aligns with the needs of the times and Chinese national culture’s drive to grasp the ethos of Chinese folk literature and to tap into the contemporary value of folk literature resources. 

At the end of 2019, the major publishing project, the Treasury of Chinese Folk Literature, released its first batch of results, said Pan Lusheng, vice chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and director of the committee in charge of the project’s compilation and publication. The project aims to practice firm cultural confidence in the new era, shouldering the responsibility and mission of inheriting and developing fine traditional Chinese culture. In terms of compilation principles, the project highlights academic norms, reviews the historical, cultural, and life outlooks of Chinese folk literature and art, focuses on the active states, lives, and inheritance of folk literature, and ensures the project is comprehensive, representative, and authentic. 

A general investigation and collection of folk literature is a vast cultural project, Pan said. Compiling huge volumes and massive digital resources demands high professional literacy. Scholars should conduct textual screenings of existing digital materials, and analyze them by combining specific contexts and text sources. It is necessary to retain and highlight orally linguistic features and regional characteristics as much as possible. Efforts are also required to respect folk literature’s historicity, traditions, and originality, preserving its valuable unique characteristics. 

Ways forward 

In the process of building a culturally strong country, scholars are not only tasked with reinvestigating and recollating Chinese folk literature’s rich resources, but also with reinterpreting and recreating folk literature. To inherit and activate folk culture, the public should be involved in events, students should participate in surveys, and scholars in academic research. Pan suggested drawing on pertinent research approaches and experiences from folklore, anthropology, and other disciplines, to comprehensively capture folk literature’s nature, features, and laws of development. 

Collecting, compiling, and researching Chinese folk literature should be practiced with a people-centered stance and methodologies of dialectical materialism and historical materialism, Chao continued. In the new era, professionals should dive into the tides of creative transformation and the innovative development of fine folk literature. 

As pioneers introduced new concepts and disciplinary methods for folk literature, they meant to break old patterns of literati dominance and to subvert traditional visions and methods for literary research. As such, the discipline is inherently endowed with a multi-disciplinary, multi-school, and multi-angle research pedigree. To highlight the social functions of folk literature and balance “literary” and “academic” attributes, folk literature studies require integrating disciplinary concepts such as ethnology, anthropology, and sociology. Following the path of multi-disciplinary intersection is not only a continuation of disciplinary traditions, but also a new growth point for future academic prosperity, Wang concluded.