英语专业毕业论文 小说类

南 开 大 学 滨 海 学 院

毕 业 论 文

中文题目：中国网络言情小说的多元化发展特点 外文题目：Diversification of the Network Romance

Novels in China

学 号：09992194

姓 名：刘天仪

年 级：09级

专 业：英语（外经贸翻译方向）

系 别：外语系

指导教师：王小娟

完成日期：2013年3月15日

内容摘要

目前在中国大陆，网络言情小说在很多小说网站和论坛都非常火爆，人气极高。本文重点分析这种小说的多元化发展特点。

本文从众多多元化特点中提取三个具体方面来进行阐述。首先，随着改革开放后社会思想的解放，高新科技的迅猛发展和各式各样美国大片的震撼冲击，许多作者的视野被拓宽，想象力变得更加丰富，从而作品的内容也被赋予更多可能性，许多新鲜元素加入其中使故事愈来愈精彩。

其次，日新月异的互联网络给大家提供了很棒的社交平台，诸如QQ, 贴吧，和微博。这些平台促进了作者与读者的互动交流，并且通过把交流中收到的建议，激发的新点子，甚至读者要求的故事发展趋向加到作品里，使粉丝们也参与到了小说创作中，在丰富了故事情节和人物形象的同时也收获了广大人气，可谓一举两得。

第三，与其他媒介的积极合作，例如影视剧改编，游戏改编和漫画改编，让网络写手们不仅最大化了其作品的经济价值，也扩大了其作品的影响力。 然而，在网络言情小说持续繁荣的情况下，对于一些潜在的发展问题我们也要多加关注。要慎重考虑如何解决作品质量下降的问题，道德伦理界限的模糊问题，以及缺少专业文学批评机制的问题。

总而言之，从分析当前形势，到展望未来趋势，可以预计中国的网络言情小说仍将在多元化这条道路上继续走下去。

关键词：多元化，网络言情小说

ABSTRACT

This paper mainly expatiate the diversification phenomenon in the development of network romance novels in Chinese mainland. Currently, this new type of romance novels is very prevailing in various novel websites and forums.

The author states three detailed aspects of the general diversification. To begin with, since emancipation of the mind after the reform and opening up ，rapid development of high technologies and great shock from American films, many writers’ horizons have been broadened and the contents of romance novels have been endowed with more possibilities.

Then ever-changing development of the Internet offers a great many of social communication platforms including QQ, BBS and weibo. All these have enhanced contact between readers and writers, so novel ideas, characters, plots, and stories are created during their interaction and then added to writers’ works.

Thirdly, by cooperating with other media such as films, TV dramas and cartoons, network romance writers are maximizing their profits and expanding their works ’ influence.

Nevertheless, some vital problems under prosperity should also be given much attention to. It is necessary for people to reflect on problems such as decline in the quality ，blurring of the moral and ethical boundary and lack of professional literary criticism mechanism for Internet romance novels.

Generally speaking, from the analysis of present situation to the prediction of future tendency, it can be predicted that the network romance novels in China will keep the trend of diversification.

Key words: diversification; network romance novels

CONTENT

内容摘要 . .................................................................................................... I ABSTRACT . .............................................................................................. I I

Chapter One Introduction ........................................................................ 1

Chapter Two The Trend towards Content Diversification . ......................... 2

2.1 Critical Inheritance of Past Works ........................................................ 2

2.2 Active Integration with Popular Elements . ........................................... 3

Chapter Three Closer Interaction with Readers in an All-round Way . ....... 4

3.1 Online Communication between Writers and Readers . ........................ 4

3.2 Offline Interaction between Writers and Readers . ................................ 5

Chapter Four A New Era of Overall Copyright Operation . ........................ 7

4.1 Cartoon Adaptation ............................................................................... 7

4.2 TV Drama and Film Adaptation ........................................................... 8

Chapter Five Problems Revealed in the Development . ............................ 10

5.1 Decline in the Quality of Internet Romance Novels........................... 10

5.2 Blurring of the Moral and Ethical Boundary . ..................................... 10

5.3 Lacking Professional Literary Criticism Mechanism . ........................ 11

Chapter Six Conclusion ............................................................................ 13

WORKS CITED ....................................................................................... 14

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ........................................................................ 15

Chapter One Introduction

Since2007, a new style of romance novels, which is mainly characterized by passing through time and space and strife among royal harem and so on, has swept the network in Chinese mainland, become best-seller in market and caused widespread concern among numerous readers. Meanwhile, various novel websites and forums have flourished in succession; famous ones such as Jin Jiang Literary Website（晋江文学城）,Hong Xiu Tian Xiang （红袖添香）,and Qi Dian(起点) 1. And the large number of these websites as well as their high click-through rates obviously demonstrates the popularity of network love novels.

This paper mainly focuses on analyzing the diversification of network romance novels in Chinese mainland. Hereinafter, some specific characteristics in their development are elaborated, including the trend towards content diversification, closer interaction with readers in an all-round way, prevailing of overall copyright operation, and problems revealed in the development. 1 Jin Jiang Literary website, http://www.jjwxc.net/ ; Hong Xiu Tian Xiang, http://www.hongxiu.com/ ; Qi Dian, http://www.qdmm.com/

Chapter Two The Trend towards Content Diversification

Nowadays the network romance novels in China are richening their own content through both critical inheritance and active absorption of novel elements. In this case, many brilliant works appear and gather much popularity for the group, network romance novels.

2.1 Critical Inheritance of Past Works

In fact, the contemporary romance novels in Chinese mainland did not amount to anything about 7 years ago. From Qiong Yao(琼瑶) to Xi Juan（席绢）2, from Yi Shu（亦舒）to Zhang Xiaoxian（张小娴）3，romance writers in Taiwan and Hong Kong almost completely occupied this market. And it was not until the rise of network here in recent years that the romance novels bloom to form a mainland-romance style which differs from those in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

As for romance novels in Hong Kong and Taiwan, many senior readers acknowledge that they are drab, platitude, superficial and thin. The lasting core narrative mode of them is the "Cinderella" mode━The heroine has noble morals but lacks physical capital, by contrast the man lead often has huge amount of physical capital but suffers from spiritual emptiness. When the two meet, they are able to complement each other and get a happy life. It reflects a traditional view that women should be in a subordinate position, professing male power, and longing for male salvation. What’s more, the themes are always limited to just love between female and male. It seems that falling in love with someone is everything, disregarding livelihood, career ambition, and close family relationship. Therefore the connotations of these novels are narrow and limited to some extent.

In this case, a large number of mainland readers become unsatisfied with this 2

3 Qiong Yao（1938～），a female romance writer in Taiwan; Xi Juan（1972～），a female romance writer in Taiwan Yi Shu（1946～）,a female romance writer in Hong Kong; Zhang Xiaoxian（1967～）,a female romance writer in Hong Kong

over-fantastic style, and they are in urgent need of new romance novels which emphasize women independence and self-strength in the relationship between the sexes. Consequently, mainland network writers actively start to attempt for their own romance styles. Therefore, besides inheriting the old tradition of a moving love story ━one principal clue, they also focus on innovation, dig profound meaning of human nature and life, and incorporate more popular factors. For instance, a romance novel featured by choosing the road of life and fighting against fate after incredible rebirth is an outstanding breakthrough.

2.2 Active Integration with Popular Elements

With the rapid development of modern high technologies, people’s horizons have been greatly broadened and imagination naturally expanded. The more advanced technologies are, the higher possibilities of incredibility things have. For example, in accordance with human’s successful practice of landing on the Moon and exploring the Mars, Blood X Blood━ a popular romance novel on “Jin Jiang Literary W ebsite” describes a wonderful story between a girl from the earth and a vampire from a faraway planet. Hundreds of years ago, who can imagine falling in love with an extraterrestrial and living in another planet?

In addition, current American movies characterized by excellent video editing and powerful visual impact also exert great influence on Chinese network writers. A typical instance was the popularity of Resident Evil, a series of movies made in America. Then in China, release of them caused a new trend of zombie-novels in the field of network novels. Lots of writers set in the post-doomsday when most human beings have turned into zombies and only a minority has survived. .

To sum up, varied emerging things are great and abundant source of writers’ innovation. The network romance writers have been trying to integrate love stories with more fashionable elements such as extraterrestrials, doomsday, biochemical weapons, robots, transformers, and even conflicts in outer space in order to make their works more attractive. As time keeps going, it is sure that more surprises lay ahead.

Chapter Three Closer Interaction with Readers in an All-round Way

On January 15, 2013 in Beijing, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) released the 31st China Internet Development Statistics Report. It shows that by the end of December 2012, the number of China’s Internet users has reached 564 million, and the number of websites has gone up to 2,680,000.” Thus since the Internet’s access into China in1994, remarkable achievements have been made during more than a decade. More and more Internet users enjoy the convenience and entertainment brought about by the Internet, and all kinds of social communication platforms keep emerging━blog, QQ, BBS, forum, weibo (micro blog) …These novel ways encourage the interaction between readers and writers.

3.1 Online Communication between Writers and Readers

Traditionally, readers can only enjoy the works of an author after the author has published them. It means the readers themselves, to a great extent, could not influence the works.

Nowadays, however, readers of network romance novels are no longer satisfied with merely acting as “bystanders” of romantic encounter s or “listeners” of love stories. They are eager to use their thought and viewing angles to experience and understand the virtual world built by the authors. And they also have the desire to express their opinions, and the impulse to be directly or indirectly involved in the creation of novels.

In many professional novel websites, there are comments area and message board following each article of works. What’s more, some websites even ingeniously open a props mall from which readers can choose virtual “flower”, “diamond”, “egg”, “landmine”, “bomb” and suchlike to show their attitudes and views towards a novel and its author. Additionally, the voting column embedded in the cover page of novels is one of many effective measures to display readers’ opinions, since data like total

downloads, total page views, total book reviews, current collections and article credits can be easily seen there.

Besides, apart from the professional novel websites, all kinds of other social communication platforms have set up a convenient bridge for interaction. By means of opening micro blog, creating weibo groups, organizing fans club, and forming readers ’ QQ group, writers intimately contact with readers, listen to their voices in a timely manner, and even let them determine the development, outcome, and after-ending chapters of the novels. As a result, authors can easily and efficiently build beneficial interactive relationships with their readers.

3.2 Offline Interaction between Writers and Readers

It is worthwhile to notice that interaction between network romance writers and their readers has extended to real society.

Even though the Internet media spreads information quickly and widely, network writers don’t ignore the advantages of traditional print media. Actually, many popular Internet works which are downloaded in a great number have been published in physical books, and achieved good sales in the market. To promote these books well, a lot of websites and presses will hold meeting campaigns to let authors communicate with readers face by face.

Apart from that, some famous novel websites even hold campaign series like “Walk into the Campus”. For instance, “Jin Jiang Literary W ebsite” has successfully organized the kind of activities in University of International Business and Economics, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing International Studies University, and The National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts. The host carried out activities like literary lectures, essay contests and book presenting. This kind of promotional activities has become a good example of tripartite interaction among writers, websites, and readers.

In conclusion, closer interaction with readers in an all-round way benefits many parts, not only in novel creation together with readers, but also in popularity of

network writers and profits as well as influence of various novel websites.

Chapter Four A New Era of Overall Copyright Operation

With the vigorous development of the network literature, piracy and infringement of Internet novels become common in China. People can download novels without payment, and some immoral writers would even copy other excellent authors’ plots and stories. In this case, how to balance authors’ profits and readers’ benefits is a severe problem. Then after varied a ttempts for a long time, the mode of “overall copyright operation” turns out to be a better solution. The mode of “overall copyright operation” refers that

“based on literary websites， people create a comprehensive and perfect novel database, and then conduct copyright operation including paying to read online, wireless reading, publishing of physical books, film, television, animation and game adaptation so as to realize the strategy of one product with more utilizations, and establish a complete industrial chain consisting of multi-business, and extend copyright operating from Internet to entities in all aspects, and finally maximize the value.”(Online)4

4.1 Cartoon Adaptation

Sun Peng(孙鹏), CEO of “Hong Xiu Tian Xiang”━the domestic female literary website, recently revealed through micro blog that the cartoon adaptation rights of five network romance novels including A Cute Bridesmaid Fleeing Marriage（逃婚俏新娘），Sunny Late-summer（盛夏晚晴天），and New 8090-Style Marriage (新式8090婚约) have officially been sold and these works will be adapted into comics for sale soon.

It is reported that the five novels are all hot works in Hong Xiu Tian Xiang, with page view all exceeding 10 million. Among the five ，the film adaptation rights of some have just been sold and some even have been shot already. 4 CNET(China), a subsidiary of CNET Networks in America,

http://www.cnetnews.com.cn/2011/1214/2070410.shtml

Professionals in the industry believe that outstanding network novels with more page views and more favors have the priority to be adapted into cartoons, because based on the popularity of the novels themselves, it is easier for the cartoon edition to attract people and get large sales .

4.2 TV Drama and Film Adaptation

The prosperity of Internet novels not only causes a sensation in the Chinese literary circle, but also draws much attention from TV drama directors and movie directors. As a consequence, the network literature has become a very important creative resource and source of archetypes of TV dramas and films, for they provide a steady stream of materials. Hot TV series and movies adapted from popular Internet romance novels such as Startling By Each Step （步步惊心），The Most Beautiful Imperial Concubine （倾世皇妃），Sealed With a Kiss(千山暮雪) and Love Is Not Blind （失恋33天）have broken ratings records in succession.

Undoubtedly, it has become an irreversible trend to adapt favored Internet novels into episodes. And reasons to this phenomenon possibly involve the following three points.

Firstly, Internet literature as a product of the interactive mode has the good audience base. After all, thanks to the open mode of universal launch and universal creation, network literature shows more popularization than the traditional paper-based literature, and becomes more in line with consumers’ demand. Therefore, adapted TV dramas and films can better take audience’ feelings into consideration and seize the hearts of audience through both the story and the personality of the characters, and naturally lay a good foundation for ratings and box office.

Secondly, the good performance-price ratio of low investment with high return is a reasonable motive. On one hand, compared to the average price of domestic first-line screenwriter at RMB 200,000 per episode, the royalties up to 20,000 per episode for the adapted edition from Internet novels is really fine and inexpensive. On the other hand, before showing of the TV series and films, abundant attention have

been successfully caught in advance, which means operators or licensees have won the first victory in terms of marketing and publicity of their products and hence much related expense could be avoided

Thirdly, script shortage of episodes and movies are threatening the development of the industry. Among film and television works in the past five years, it can be easily found that many of them belong to renovation of old works, such as the new A Dream of Red Mansions, the new Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the new Journey to the West , the new Water Margin, the new My Fair Princess, and the new Bride With White Hair . In this case, integration with network novels brings new vitality into TV dramas and films.

In a word, the mode of “overall copyright operation” establishes win-win cooperation for the development of both Internet novels and other art carriers. This kind of operation not only guarantees and extends Internet writers’ benefits, but also stimulate reform in other industries.

Chapter Five Problems Revealed in the Development

Admittedly, the prosperity of Chinese network romance novels is demonstrated by lots of facts, but some problems having revealed in their development should not be set aside. After all, the less the barriers are, the smoother the ways will be.

5.1 Decline in the Quality of Internet Romance Novels

Commercial interests lead to decline in the quality of Internet love novels. Today Chinese Internet novels are not purely literary, but in a mixed state involving literary value and commercial interests, and more likely commercial greater than literary. In recent years, the forming of the reading mode (pay to read online) and the download mode of network novels stimulates the creativity of online writers. Because many Internet literary websites usually measure payment by the novel length (word number), or the amount of click-through rate and downloads, then some writers will deliberately extend the length by adding many unnecessary messages or repeat something. It can be imagined that this will surely result in works of being wordy, structural confused, and lacking of artistry.

5.2 Blurring of the Moral and Ethical Boundary

Because of the low threshold of Internet creation, the current level of network romance writers varies greatly. Driven by commercial interests, quite a few writers tend to produce shallow and vulgar Internet romance novels, which is an undeniable fact. The moral and ethical boundary of traditional romance novels is clear. The performance of love in them has a certain restraint, and it aims at pursuit of beauty and causing people’s positive emotional recognition. Even if there are some negative and dejected emotions, there is a limit.

However, now many network romance novels pursue irritation instead of emotional recognition and moral education. They have much more love performance

than traditional novels, and resorting to sensory description, such as a large segment of the intimate descriptions, has become the primary means of love performance for a lot of network romance novels. Sometimes even the reader will take the initiative to require increasing intimate descriptions between the male and female. Then salacious segment accounts for larger percentage in more and more Internet works.

In this context, during the pursuit of economic profits, commercial websites which post romance novels should not neglect considering social benefits, and strictly abiding by laws and regulations on cultural management in China.

5.3 Lacking Professional Literary Criticism Mechanism

Literary creation and literary criticism have always been considered two indispensable wings of literature development. Firstly the literary creation is writers’ conception and writing. And then literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature.

The network literature needs healthy, reasonable, and penetrating network literary criticism. Currently, “civilian criticism” is very popular online. It refers to views that any Internet users can post up online and they can be long-winded or a sentence or just a word. Almost all the important literary phenomena have a large number of short or long “civilian criticism”. But the majority of these comments in the forums are posted without any editing. Moreover, casual feelings and abusive criticism are more common. Online literary theory or literary criticism is scarce and weak, let alone the academic and theoretical-literary criticism.

The healthy development of network literature needs the participation of a great deal of profound and theoretical experts to make comments on the phenomenon and works seriously.

“Professional critics ’ interpretations of works do not linger on the

degree of acceptance in the general sense, but include a systematic

exploration and discussion of deeper significance of the works. Due to

existence of the professional literary criticism mechanism，simple views

or casual feelings may be upgraded to criticisms which contain more

scientific grounds.”（Dong and Zhang 218,219）

Therefore, compared with “civilian criticism”, the professional literary criticism mechanism can be more effective to enhance the development of network novels.

Chapter Six Conclusion

In the course of this analysis, I have demonstrated that the network romance novels in Chinese mainland are developing in a diversified way, including not only in content and creation mode, but also in contact between writers and readers and copyright operation which maximizes authors ’ profits as well as works ’ influence. There is no doubt that the prosperity of network romance novels, exemplified by the high productivity and numerous download, are boosted to a large degree by the diversification mode of development, However, as the old saying goes, a coin has two sides. Some key problems revealed in development should not be ignored, such as blurring of the moral and ethical boundary and lacking of professional literary criticism mechanism.If these problems not solved, the improvement in the future will be hindered by problems left over.

Then in actual development process of Internet romance novels, readers' tastes and ideas are bound to keep changing with times. So in the development of Internet literature, the essence of the Internet romance novels’ content should also go with the time, and they should cater to demands of the development of socialist market, meet the spiritual needs of people, explore and invite debates on the deeper meanings of network romance novels, and depict more events occurring in real society. On this basis, network writers should continue to seek more novel and more creative ideas and inspirations.

In summary, from this we can predict that the development of Internet romance novels in the future must also be diversified.

WORKS CITED

[1]CNNIC, the 31st China Internet Development Statistics Report, http://www.cnnic.cn/gywm/shzr/shzrdt/201301/t20130115_38518.htm

[2]CNET(China),起点女生网文学全版权运营新时代，

http://www.cnetnews.com.cn/2011/1214/2070410.shtml

[3] 董学文、张永刚，《文学原理》，北京大学出版社，2001版，第218、219页。

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

My deepest gratitude goes first and foremost to my supervisor, Ms. Wang Xiaojuan, for her invaluable assistance, counsel and acute criticism. She has walked me through all the stages of the writing of this thesis. Without her consistent instruction, the thesis could not have reached its present form.

Then special thanks should go to my friends who have put considerable time and effort into their comments on the draft.

Finally, I am indebted to my beloved parents. They took good care of my life and gave me a lot of encouragement when I was working at this thesis. I owe a lot to them for their consistent support and encouragement.