The Artistic Exploration of “New Novel of Society”—Qiao Ye and Tradition

Abstract

Qiao Ye's literary creations are inextricably linked with Chinese literary tradition. In her novels, she transforms many traditional techniques found in traditional Chinese literature in a creative manner, and has gradually crafted her unique writing form of “new novel of society” in her two-decade writing career. Qiao Ye’s unique artistic exploration not only enables the stories in her works to reflect the social conditions, and human nature and human relationships in contemporary Chinese society, but also presents a new, more casual format that uses hybrid discourse and intersections of identity in its literary narrative, thus forming Qiao Ye’s personalized artistic style of analytic/reflective narrative. This should be regarded as Qiao Ye’s creative transformation to the traditional discourse found in Chinese story-telling novels or pan-story-telling novels.

Key words： Qiao Ye; new novel of society; transformation of tradition; analytic narrative