What Is Meant by the Epic Nature of Contemporary Novels?— Notes on A Lifelong Journey

Abstract

A Lifelong Journey (Renshijian) is a novel about the fate of common people, especially of the workers, in China’s practice of changing reality from the 1950s to the present. It inherits the legacy of the realistic novels in the 19th century and endows them with contemporary features. In the humanitarian-based “stories of good men,” Liang Xiaosheng highlights the general thinking of the common people’s happy life as a goal, and gives expressive to the epic nature of contemporary novels.

Keywords

Liang Xiaosheng, A Lifelong Journey, modern epic, folk ethics, humanitarianism, analysis on stratum

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