The holistic view of the development of children's literature in China across a span of a century

"Human discovery" is a new construction of knowledge about "humans". It is not only the starting point of The May 4th literary revolution, but also the origin of Chinese children's literature. Its internal logic is that "human literature" can be produced only when the value of children is recognized first.
From the literary revolution to the revolutionary literature and then to the Anti-Japanese War literature, the human theme has been switched to the class theme and the national theme. The particularity of children's literature was weakened in the overall system of national literature and integrated into the main trend of Anti-Japanese War literature. In the process of transformation from "children-based " to "national-based", children's literature is shown as a realistic literary system and genre order, and its development is branded with the mark of the times. Under this system, Chinese children's literature pays more attention to the national spirit and national consciousness at the ideological level, and pays more attention to the exploration of "national form" at the artistic level, which endows "national literature" with extremely distinctive "Chinese" characteristics.
After the founding of the people's Republic of China, the development of Chinese children's literature entered a new stage. Chinese literature, including children's literature, was incorporated into the national system and truly became a kind of "national literature". Children's literature has become a part of the "people's cause", and its ideological and educational nature has been activated to the greatest extent. Therefore, the distance between Chinese children's literature and contemporary literature has been narrowed again, and they have been integrated into the broad category of "people's Literature". The children's literature circle issued an appeal that "children's literature is literature", which demonstrated the self-discipline of literary subjectivity in a synonymous and repeated language, and concentrated on the aesthetic appeal of "depoliticization" to get rid of subordination and instrumentalism. The method of "children's literature back to Literature" proposed in the 1980s did not adapt to the changes of China's social development in the 1990s, and was gradually replaced by "children's literature back to real children's Literature".
In the new century, Chinese literature, including children's literature, has become an important part of the activities of "world literature" and the center of global Chinese literature creation. Amid this background, the research on Chinese children's literature in the new century has three focuses: the first is the vision of Chinese literature in the new century, the second is the pattern of world literature and culture, and the third is the space for the exchange and dissemination of Chinese and foreign children's literature. These three focal points determine the coordinates of Chinese children's literature research in the new century and are the three-dimensional space for children's literature creation and research. Chinese literature in the new century is no longer lagging behind integration into world literature, but is an important structural element of cross language reading of global literature. Writing which is not relying on the advantage of "identity politics", but relying on the local experience has become a means of releasing self-confidence in Chinese literature in the new century. Facing the interaction of childhood culture, consumer culture and media culture, children's literature in the new century starts a new exploration from two levels. On the one hand, writing about "Chinese childhood" based on China's local realistic situation is called for. This spiritual identity is the core of children's self-identity. It metaphorically describes what a "Chinese" should be through literature, that is, to lay a "spiritual foundation" for children. On the other hand, enhancing the cultural content of childhood and exploring a broader cultural picture and spiritual home in the future from the height of the shared community of human destiny. This exploration is deeply rooted in the soil of China's nationalization, but the theme is worldwide and the spirit is human.
Published on October 7, 2021