Sidorenko, A. Yu. IDYLL OF STRUGGLE: LIANG BIN’S ROMAN “KEEP THE RED FLAG FLYING” // Proceedings of Petrozavodsk State University. 2019. No 7 (184). P. 70–76. DOI: 10.15393/uchz.art.2019.388


Literary studies

IDYLL OF STRUGGLE: LIANG BIN’S ROMAN “KEEP THE RED FLAG FLYING”

Sidorenko
A. Yu. 		Saint Petersburg University
Keywords:
Chinese literature
red classics
socialist realism
bildungsroman
literary policy in PRC
Liang Bin
value directions
personosphere
chronotope		 Summary: As a prime example of the 1950-s novels about the Chinese countryside, Liang Bin’s “Keep the Red Flag Flying” (1957) is frequently positioned as a bildungsroman with the Chinese peasants of the 1920–30s as a collective protagonist. As our analysis shows, Chu Laochung, the novel’s protagonist, may be viewed as a bildungsroman hero in a conventional sense, however, his bildung per se could not be narrated with any degree of plausibility due to ideological constraints. On the other hand, Yan Jiangtao, an adolescent, whose growing up and communist schooling are presented as communist bildung, his character and attitude being static and ‘correct’ the whole time, cannot be described as a bildungsroman character. Jiangtao’s upbringing, as we see it, is more of a process of education than a personal evolution. The main objective of the novel, in accordance with the political agenda of its times, is to educate the reader, to direct his value conceptions. The novel adheres to idyllic chronotope, making it fit to be called an idyll of struggle.



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