Literary Strategy and the Educational Function of Literature

The educational function of literature depends not only on the content of the literary work but is also closely bound up with the form of the work, and especially with its literary strategy. For example, when a work becomes what Bakhtin calls a “polyphonic novel,” bearing many independent and non-fused voices and consciousnesses, so that reading and reception, seemingly losing the author's direct guidance, become extremely complex, then literary strategy in fact takes the place of the author, effectively regulating the subtle relation between reader and work and thereby influencing the realization of the educational function. This essay sets out precisely from the study of the modes of literary reception to discuss the relation between literary strategy and the educational function of literature, in pursuit of a deeper understanding of the educational function of literature and the mechanism of its operation.

1. The “Sharer” and the “Spectator”

In The Psychology of Art, Müller-Freienfels divides the aesthetic subject into the “sharer” and the “spectator.” Nietzsche, for his part, divides art into “Dionysian art” and “Apollonian art.” What the two have in common is that both divide aesthetic activity into two types: the “sharing” and the “Dionysian,” that is, the sympathetic or empathic; and the “spectating” and the “Apollonian,” that is, the examining-and-judging. This division of the aesthetic subject is based on the differences in the subject's individual temperament and artistic endowment; and the division of art reveals the aesthetic features of different types of work. In fact, not only is the aesthetic subject divided into the above two types, and art divided into the above two types; even one and the same subject, in the course of reading and appreciating different works — or even the same work — may combine both at once. Toward certain characters in a work, he is deeply moved, and so enters into the interior of the object, fuses with the object into one, struggles and strives together with it, shares its bitterness and sweetness, and shares too its most hidden, deepest emotions; while toward certain other characters, he does not efface the boundary between them, but places them at a certain “distance” outside, and examines and judges these objects. That is to say, in the reading process the appreciating subject can be both the “sharer” of certain characters and the “spectator” of certain others.

In The Nature of Aesthetic Value, Stolovich cites a plot-fragment from the long novel Success by the famous modern German novelist Lion Feuchtwanger: the Nazi Otto Klenk, when he first begins watching the film Battleship Potemkin, strenuously maintains the attitude of a “spectator,” coolly admiring only the film's verisimilitude and the actors' performance. Gradually, he becomes interested in the simple characters and events in it. Out of social instinct, he is dissatisfied with the incompetence of the officers, and grows still more indignant at the rebelling sailors — that is, Klenk still maintains a psychical distance from the figures on the screen, stands on his own position, and rationally appraises and judges the object, so much so that he develops an aversion to the film. Yet the images and music of the film, with enormous emotional force, sweep him into them, so that he cannot escape their control and, unawares, ends up on the side of the sailors, feeling and longing as they do — although he soon extricates himself again from this “trap.” [1] This fragment vividly illustrates the fact that the appreciating subject combines both types. On one hand, owing to differences in thought-notion and value-notion, the subject maintains a psychical distance from the object, and observes, examines, and judges the object with the cool attitude of a “spectator”; on the other hand, the work and the various strategies it adopts, with enormous affective force, sweep him in, making him a “sharer.”

When the appreciating subject, in reading, is in the “sharing” state, he enters the inner heart of the work's character, the distance between him and the object vanishes, and the two finally become one. This state Hume and Burke explain as “sympathy”: “Sympathy should be regarded as a kind of substitution; that is, we put ourselves in another's position, and in many matters feel just as the other feels.” [2] Lipps calls it “empathy”: “We transpose what we have personally experienced, our feeling of force, our striving, our will, our active or passive sensations, into things external to us, transpose them into what happens to or together with these things.” [3] When discussing the tragic, Lipps holds that tragic pleasure springs from an “objectified sense of self-value”: “In another person I feel, to a high degree, myself and my human value. I experience, or feel, to a still higher degree, what is called being a person.” [4] What Hume and Burke and Lipps have in common is that they all affirm that, in aesthetic experience, subject and object mutually fuse and exchange. But the two views also differ: Hume and Burke hold that in the process of subject-object fusion, what the subject experiences is the object's situation, feeling, and emotion; whereas Lipps stresses that what is experienced within the interior of the object is not the object but the subject's own sensation, will, and emotional experience.

It should be said that both views have their reasonableness and each its limitation. Appreciation is a bidirectional construction of subject and object. On one hand, the object is a “summoning structure” full of “blanks”; it stimulates, induces, and regulates the subject's appreciative activity. On the other hand, the subject, owing to his own individual temperament, life experience, and aesthetic experience, has a prior aesthetic-psychical structure; he throws himself into the appreciative activity with his own particular aesthetic expectation. In this process, the subject does not passively receive and react, but, setting out from his own expectation, experience, and aesthetic-psychical structure, actively explores, interprets, and creates. Thus the object's stimulation, inducement, and regulation, and the subject's exploration, interpretation, and creation, under mutual influence and interaction, jointly form the bidirectional construction in literary appreciation. Therefore experience is not merely the subject's savoring of his own emotional experience from within the object, nor a simple re-enactment of the object's emotion, but an exchange, permeation, and fusion of subject and object — bearing the subject's imprint while also having the object's features. Once the exchange reaches its climax, the boundary of subject and object entirely vanishes, and the phenomenon of resonance appears.

Because literary appreciation is a bidirectional construction between subject and object, literary experience is the experience of mutually fused subject-object emotion; this necessarily opens up the psychical space of the appreciating subject, enriches his emotional experience, and enlarges his sympathies. Especially the excellent literary work provides us with “the whole domain of human emotion,” and what we feel from it “is not some pure or single emotional quality, but the dynamic process of life itself, the process of continual oscillation between the opposite poles — joy and sorrow, hope and fear, ecstasy and despair.” [5] This enormous emotional condensation gives the reader a powerful affecting and profound influence. Moreover, in literary appreciation, the reader must open his own heart, both understanding himself and understanding the object, and thereby reaching an emotional exchange and fusion with the object. That is to say, aesthetic construction itself demands that the reader have sympathy and cultivate this sympathetic heart. From this angle, Burke's view that “love is the chief psychical content of the general sense of beauty” [6] — once we remove its over-emphasis on the sexual — still has a reasonable core. The deep sympathy cultivated in literary appreciation, and the enriched, elevated emotional experience, are then the firm basis and necessary premise for further accepting the lofty thoughts and feelings of love of country, love of people, and even love of humankind. The fusion and identity of subject and object places the appreciating subject and the work's character in one and the same situation, sharing the object's feeling and responding in common to one and the same situation. In this process, the subject sets out from his own thought-emotion and value-notion to understand the object; and the object too, in a state unnoticed by the subject, takes emotion as its vehicle and transmits its own thought-notion and value-attitude to the subject. Or rather, the subject's feeling, thinking, and responding are unawares constrained and influenced by the object's thought-viewpoint and value-standard. This transmission and exchange of thought-notion and value-attitude is the more direct educational function of literature, and is what we often call literature's power of imperceptible influence (qianyi mohua).

Of course, in aesthetic construction the two sides, subject and object, are not always in balanced equivalence. The relation of the two is related to the features of the appreciating subject. When the subject's individuality leans toward the subjective and he has rich experience, the subject, as one party of the bidirectional construction, tends to set out more from the self, to create actively, and to occupy the dominant, advantageous position; and there arises what Lipps called “empathy.” When the subject leans toward the objective, or is weak in independence, or lacks life experience, the subject tends to be in a passive position, even entirely controlled by the object; and there arises what Hume and Burke called “sympathy.”

At the same time, the relation of the two sides of aesthetic construction is also related to the strategy of the literary work. In The Rhetoric of Fiction, Booth discusses the “inside view” as a strategy of fiction. He holds that “any sustained inside view, of whatever depth, temporarily turns the character whose mind is shown into a narrator,” [7] and thereby makes the reader sink deep into it, sympathize with and watch the observed character, and live through their emotion. Booth takes Jane Austen's Emma as an example, pointing out that, by “presenting most of the story through Emma's eyes, the author makes sure that we travel with her rather than stand against her.” [8] Here, the sustained inside observation constitutes an invisible pressure upon the reader, compelling him to view the world through Emma's eyes, to experience everything with Emma's heart. The subject not only effaces his boundary with the object, but his own self may become lost, dissolved within the object, entirely controlled by the object, becoming the object's substitute — this is the so-called phenomenon of “identification.” In this phenomenon of “identification,” the appreciating subject loses his own independent power of judgment and blindly follows the character in the work. Just as Robert Langbaum points out, the sympathy produced by the direct depiction of inner experience leads the reader to suspend his own moral judgment. Booth too saw this point. He says: “The deepening of inside observation in the modern novel, the various streams of consciousness, attempting to give the reader an impression of living thought and feeling — the appearance of these phenomena makes us, with regard to those narrators we need not believe or who participate in the reflection, adopt a blind attitude toward our own possibility of making independent judgment.” [9]

Here the problem arises. In the phenomenon of “identification,” on one hand the emotional affecting power can be greatly strengthened, effectively transmitting the object's thought-notion, value-attitude, and moral norm to the reader; on the other hand, it can also, through “mistaken identification,” bring negative consequences. That is to say, while imperceptibly influenced by the character's positive, affirmative thought and emotion, the reader at the same time loses vigilance against and examination of the character's negative, deniable thought and moral character, so that he is unawares negatively influenced. This is especially conspicuous among adolescent readers whose life experience is shallow and whose independence is weak. Someone may point out that the above situation does not belong to aesthetic phenomena. But whether or not we acknowledge it as aesthetic activity, in actual reading and appreciation, that the reader involuntarily intervenes within the work, sinks deep into the inner heart of the work's character, and so comes under the character's control, the phenomenon of identification appearing — this does indeed exist.

It is worth pointing out that Booth, in discussing the “inside view,” saw that this strategy narrows the psychical distance between reader and character and makes the two become one; but he neglected the other side: namely, when the thought-notion, value-system, and moral norm of the work's character have a great gap from the reader's own original notions and norms, and when the reader also has a strong independence and much reading experience, then even a long-sustained inside observation can scarcely make the reader identify and fuse with the character. On the contrary, there arises a “double phenomenon”: the reader both views the world through the character's eyes and feels the world with the character's heart, while at the same time always taking the character and his heart as the object of his own examination and judgment, thereby constituting an ironic effect. Mao Dun's Putrefaction is a good example. The author's subtle psychological depiction of Zhao Huiming, on one hand, makes the reader view the secret-agent-ridden society through Zhao Huiming's eyes, grow indignant at this demonic world, and develop a deep sympathy for Zhao Huiming, so that he tolerantly regards Zhao Huiming's guilt and clamors for the author, who had once laid down her pen, to continue the serialized novel and give Zhao Huiming a way out; on the other hand, the secret-agent Zhao Huiming's gap from the reader in political notion and moral norm makes the reader keep a due distance from her, and thereby take the character's self-expression as self-disclosure and pass a just judgment and reproach upon her.

Here the viewpoint and attitude of the implied author are extremely important. The thought-notion and emotional attitude implied in the work, contrasted with the notion and attitude of the work's character, likewise constrain the reader, making him slip out of sympathy and treat the character with a rational attitude. In Putrefaction, the diary form constrains the author, who cannot possibly come forward in person to state her own viewpoint and attitude, but can only let Zhao Huiming disclose the contradictions of her own inner heart — her self-reproach, self-mockery, self-consolation, self-reproach. The direct presentation of these inner contradictions both intimately expresses the character's psychical reality and, in the work's conscious selection, arrangement, and display of contradictory phenomena, is permeated with the author's viewpoint and attitude. As Chatman says: “The implied author, unlike the narrator, can tell us nothing; he, or more precisely it, has no voice, no tool for directly communicating. It instructs us silently, through the overall design of the work, by means of all the voices it relies on for whatever it has chosen to let us understand.” [10] Thereupon, what the reader faces is not only the single notion-attitude and value-system of the character, but at the same time the mutually contradictory, opposed notion-attitudes and value-systems of the characters, as well as the new author's notion-attitude and value-system embodied through them; the reader too no longer simply weighs them by his own original measure, but, upon the new reference-system the author provides, contrasts, sifts, and reflects upon character, author, and his own thought-notion, value-attitude, and moral norm, and so, in the mutual collision, is educated and elevated. Of course, this need not be a process of logical reasoning; it is perhaps more often an intuitive apprehension, but it does, after all, have the intense permeation of the reader's reason. From this we draw the other mode of reading and appreciation we are to discuss — the “spectating” reading.

“Spectating” is transcending outside things and being wholly unconnected with them — an absolute detachment. It too is a bidirectional construction between subject and object; only that, in this activity, the appreciating subject has not, under the impact of emotion, lost the boundary between subject and object, but with a clear-headed reason keeps a certain psychical distance from the object, and so views the object as object, and judges it. (In this essay, “distance” and “psychical distance” are relative to the unity of subject and object; they are not the aesthetic psychical distance of which Bullough speaks.)

In The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response, Iser carefully analyzes the reader's psychical construction in the reading process, holding that in reading the reader experiences the various viewpoints the text provides and links these differing viewpoints one after another, thereby making the work and himself enter a state of movement. [11] Iser here lays stress on the construction of the work's meaning. Although he opposes traditional hermeneutics' inquiry into the meaning of the text, in fact he too replaces the seeking of meaning with the experiencing of meaning, replacing static result with dynamic process. Iser's revelation of the moving state of subject-object interaction in the reading process is most illuminating for our deeper understanding of the concrete mechanism by which the educational function of literature is realized.

From the angle of the educational function of literature, the literary text provides the reader with many different, even mutually opposed, thought-notions and value-systems. For so long as literature takes man as its object — so long as man lives in a particular society and is not “the female ape-man” (Engels' phrase) — then in depicting and presenting man, it necessarily reveals the sociality in man, his thought-notions and value-attitudes. Here are the differing notions and attitudes of the various characters, and the self-contradictory, changing notions and attitudes of one and the same character. Thereupon, in the reading process, the reader too ceaselessly meets the different notions and attitudes that do not belong to himself. Of course, the reader by no means passively receives all these things, but always stubbornly faces them with his own original notions and value-standards, and even entirely negates and rejects them. Yet, even if he negates and rejects them, his own original thought-notion and value-system have already suffered the impact and challenge of different systems and standards. Moreover, all these different notion-systems in the work are again placed upon the general background of the author's thought-notion and value-orientation, putting them in the position of being examined. This thought-notion and value-orientation of the author, permeating the whole of the work and constituting the general background, plays an important role in influencing the reader's own appraisal, guiding him to accept certain notions and deny others. Likewise, the reader may also adopt an opposing, rejecting attitude toward the author's thought-notion and value-standard, especially when the author too eagerly forces his own choice and evaluation upon the reader, which often arouses the reader's aversion and produces a counter-effect. Precisely for this reason, Engels advocated that the more concealed the author's tendency, the better. If the author provides the reader a vivid picture of the inner world and the outer world, while concealing his own tendency, letting the reader personally live through it, be deeply moved, and make his own judgment and choice, the author merely covertly inducing — then this seemingly entirely self-made choice of the reader deeply influences him, making the thought-notions and value-notions accepted in the reading process take root in his heart.

It can be seen that in the reading-appreciation process, the interaction of thought-notion and value-system among subject and object is extremely complex. Here, the notions and attitudes of reader, author, and the work's characters mutually attract, reject, collide, and fuse, constituting an intricate relation and a winding movement. Because such a complex movement exists in the reading process, and because of the reader's active role in reading, the reader can therefore not only transcend himself but also possibly break through the limitation of the author's thought, gaining from the work a new illumination that goes against the author's own intention.

But this is not to say that the author's thought-tendency and value-orientation do not matter. In the mid-nineteenth century, the publication of Madame Bovary once provoked a lawsuit, the author Flaubert being charged with “offending public morals.” The cause lies both in the conflict between the author's and society's moral notions, and, more importantly, in the new “impersonal form of narration” the work adopted, which had not been understood and accepted by readers. In the novel, the author, by a new narrative device, entirely withdraws into the background and hides himself; this provoked confusion in judgment among readers who had not yet adapted to this narrative technique. On this, Jauss analyzes: “The new artistic technique broke the tradition of the old novel — in which the moral judgment of the characters was always unambiguous, leaking out without doubt in the depiction. Such a novel could activate or pose new social problems; this is precisely why Flaubert incurred the charge of offending public morals.” [12] “Through a new notion, it makes the reader rise beyond his own moral judgment of the characters in the book and turns the predetermined public moral question back into an open question.” [13] Of course, the author's entire withdrawal into the background by no means means withdrawing from the work; in fact he cannot withdraw from the work. For any literary work cannot do without choice, and where there is choice, there is the author. Even the so-called “zero-degree narration,” so long as it is brought into the framework of literature, has already been separated by the author out of the general system of real life, and is no longer the same as life in its raw state. But once the author does not follow the narrative convention, does not make his judgment and appraisal by the original moral standard, and consciously lets the religious feeling and public morality society possesses fall into a state where they cannot pass a verdict on a Madame Bovary, this not only makes the reader's judgment fall into perplexity, but at the same time makes the real contradiction itself come to the fore, compelling the reader to face reality squarely, so that he comes to doubt society's original religious feeling and public morality as criteria of evaluation, and cannot but adjust his own moral notions and moral standards.

In some contemporary works, the author's withdrawal is, on one hand, of course a respect for the reader, providing the reader a free and broad space for choice; on the other hand, it can also thereby cause errors in the reader's judgment and choice. The problem lies not in whether or not the author should have a tendency and judgment, but in how skillfully to use it, so as to make author and reader unfold an equal and full dialogue, exchange, and common exploration on the various notions, rather than the author's solitary despotism.

It must be explained that, in actual literary appreciation, the reader is often not focused on the work's thought-tendency and ethical-moral questions, but first establishes an aesthetic relation with the work. Yet, because literature and art “set out from the standpoint of the integral interests of man, and depict reality according to the way man sees, feels, understands, and evaluates,” [14] the reader too throws himself into the appreciative activity as an integral person, appreciating the work according to man's feeling, man's understanding, man's evaluation, and so thought-evaluation and moral judgment cannot but covertly play their role. It must be admitted that man's aesthetic relation to the object differs from the scientific relation and from the relation of real interest. In literary appreciation, the subject does not directly make truth-judgments and interest-judgments of the object, but is intoxicated in the beauty of the object, fully apprehending the object's beauty. But as an integral person, the appreciating subject's power of truth-judgment and interest-judgment still works covertly. The subject not only weighs the literary work by the standard of beauty, but also by the standard of man. Once the object shows a false detail, the subject's power of truth-judgment immediately turns from latent to manifest, judges the object to be false, and rejects the object. This is precisely the coming of the disillusionment of which Lu Xun spoke — it lies in seeing the false within the true. The latent role of interest-judgment is likewise so. On the surface, the appreciating subject does not pursue a real aim; but in fact he demands that the object accord with purpose. That is to say, although the subject is not focused on the object's thought-notion, value-attitude, and moral norm, he yet unavoidably meets them on these contents, colliding and even conflicting. A. I. Burov too speaks of this. He says: “Without doubt, in the sense of beauty we seem to see a latent, real interest-calculation, yet within it we also feel it is not a kind of interest-calculation. At least one may say (and this too is proven by all historical experience) that man has an intimate interest-relation with this emotion that originally does not involve interest-calculation.” [15] “Only by the standpoint of man can man aesthetically judge a certain thing; therefore moral evaluation is necessarily included within the aesthetic evaluation of content.” [16]

From the above analysis it can be seen that the subject-object relation in literary appreciation has many types. The first is for the appreciating subject to throw himself into the reading activity in the way of a “sharer”; the subject is swept into the situation the work provides, enters the inner heart of the work's character, effaces his boundary with the object, and resonates emotionally with it, being affected and infused. This is a process of emotional exchange, energy transmission, and the imperceptible influence of thought and consciousness. In this state, the subject is deeply, multi-layeredly influenced by the object — especially when the phenomenon of identification occurs, the subject entirely abandons self-defense and blindly follows the object, because “to live deeply into the image of another person without any reservation is thereby to refuse to adopt a critical attitude toward the role and toward oneself.” [17] The second is to appreciate in the way of a “spectator.” Here the subject keeps a certain psychical distance from the object, relatively rationally examines the characters in the work, and is educated and benefited in the mutual collision of many thought-notions, value-systems, and moral norms. By comparison, the former has an enormous emotional force, and its influence on the reader is deeper and more powerful; the latter contains more cognitive factors. The former often lacks a critical attitude; the latter always treats the object with a critical eye.

Owing to the linear feature of language, the literary work can generally only narrate and depict different characters in sequence; this provides the possibility for the reader to separately enter different objects and become the “sharer” of different objects. But more often, the reader becomes the “sharer” of a certain character and the “spectator” of the others — that is, the reader fuses with a certain character into one body, and then, setting out from that character's situation and standpoint, takes the surrounding other characters, together with that character, as objects to examine, appraise, and treat. Compared with the “spectated” object, the reader has a firmer emotional tie with, and a deeper and more multi-layered inner exchange with, the “shared” object. Therefore, in the reading-appreciation process, whether as “spectated” object or “shared” object, their influence on the reader is not equal. Especially when there exist differences or conflicts in the thought-viewpoint, value-attitude, and moral norm of the two, the reader tends very naturally to “share” one object and reject the “spectated” object.

The “sharing type” and the “spectating type” are two extremes in the phenomenon of reading; in between lies the “middle type,” which is neither close to nor distant from the object, or which can both enter into it and stand outside it. In this situation, the reader experiences in common with the work's character, sinks deep into the other party's inner heart, and exchanges and fuses emotionally with it, yet does not, like the “sharer,” entirely efface the boundary between subject and object or become intoxicated within the illusory realm the literary work creates, but still keeps self-consciousness, taking the content he experiences as the object of self-conscious examination. In examining, the reader at the same time discovers the soul-depths of both the object and the self. Therefore, from this angle, reading is also a kind of self-reflection, self-discovery, self-dialogue; and self-reflection, self-discovery, and self-dialogue are precisely the effective paths of self-education, as Seneca held: “The basis of moral cultivation is inner dialogue; in this dialogue man is at once his own accuser, his own defender, and his own judge.” [18]

Because, in the reading process, there exist different types of relation between subject and object, and the different types in turn conduce to the realization of the educational function of literature in different ways and to different degrees, this provides the possibility for the author to use literary strategy to regulate the educational function of the work.

2. Textual Strategy and the Educational Function of Literature

The different types in reading-appreciation come down, in the last analysis, to the psychical distance between reader and object. This depends, on one hand, on the reader. Hume holds: “All things in nature are by birth disposed to love things resembling themselves.” [19] Burke too says: “In aesthetic feeling, men's hearts are not at once drawn by the appropriate proportion, or by completeness or balance, but are at once drawn by some fundamental resemblance.” [20] In reading, the reader always, unawares, makes a choice, very naturally standing on the side of the work's character whose thought-notion, value-attitude, and moral norm are close and suited to his own, and rejecting and resisting the opposite. That is to say, the reader's emotion is swept in, drawn more by the character whose notion, attitude, and norm he affirms, gradually narrowing and effacing the psychical distance until he fuses with that character; while toward the character he denies he maintains a distance, and from the angle of the character he affirms he examines and judges the other party.

The reader's choice is only one pole that decides the psychical distance of reading; the strategy of the text is the other pole, and it plays an extremely important role in regulating the psychical distance between reader and the work's characters. The determination of the work's protagonist is one of the effective strategies. Iser points out: “Generally speaking, there exist two possibilities: the selected norm is expressed either through the protagonist or through the secondary characters; the result of each choice is different. If the norm is expressed by the protagonist, then the secondary characters will dilute or deviate from the norm; if the situation is just the reverse, then the protagonist may express a certain critique of the norm. In the first case, the norm is consolidated; in the second, the norm is destroyed. In this way, the retained repertoire distributed among the different viewpoints provides the criterion for the evaluation of the selected norm.” [21] Because, in the work, the protagonist's horizon is the dominant horizon and also the horizon the reader most frequently and repeatedly contacts and meets, and in the multiple exchanges achieves a fusion of horizons. At the same time, it induces the reader to become the protagonist's “sharer,” experiencing, observing, and thinking together with the protagonist. That is to say, after the protagonist's horizon fuses with the reader's horizon, the protagonist's notions and norms are internalized by the reader, transformed into the reader's own thing and retreating to the position of background, becoming a reference-system; while the secondary characters are placed before this background, standing at a distance from the reader, examined and judged within the reference-system.

Here exists a contradictory phenomenon: the work's protagonist ought, of course, to be the center of the reader's attention. But precisely because he is the center of attention and deeply arouses the reader's sympathy, the reader may efface his psychical distance from the protagonist, become one with him, struggle and experience together with him — that is, the protagonist gradually becomes the reader himself and no longer the examined object. The secondary characters are both the protagonist's objects and the reader's objects, standing in the “spectated” relation with the reader. Only when reading is suspended, and the reader withdraws from the work to reflect, can the protagonist possibly become again the examined, appraised object. (Of course, research-oriented reading may be entirely different. On this point, see my essay “A New Theory of the Functions of Literature,” in Literature and Art Studies, 1991, no. 3.) The fusion of reader and protagonist in reading-appreciation unawares completes the reception process of the exchange and transfer of notions and norms — this “assimilation–accommodation” process. The notions and norms of the secondary characters, being examined and judged, may thus possibly be rejected, especially when they conflict with the protagonist.

Therefore, in the literary work, the protagonist's thought-notion, value-attitude, and moral norm are most easily identified with by the reader and most influential. From this point, the “three prominences” of the so-called “Gang of Four” is not entirely without theoretical basis. Only that they one-sidedly stressed the educational function of literature — or more precisely, its indoctrinating function — and the resulting patterning of literary creation, which cut off the rich and varied real life, severely damaged the truthfulness of the literary work, and was thus spurned by people.

It should be pointed out that the psychical distance between reader and the work's character depends on many factors. The choice of protagonist is only one. It uses the frequent contact of the protagonist's horizon with the reader's horizon to reach a fusion of the two horizons, thereby guiding the reader to stand on the protagonist's position and view the whole external world through the protagonist's eyes. But this strategy only provides the possibility of narrowing the distance, not a guarantee. For example, Lu Xun's The True Story of Ah Q. As the work's protagonist, Ah Q does indeed arouse the reader's sympathy, drawing the reader deep into his inner heart to experience together his psychical experience; on the other hand, because Lu Xun adopted comic technique to enlarge Ah Q's spiritual “scab,” he places Ah Q beneath the reader's mocking gaze. (Aristotle held that comedy imitates persons inferior to the general run — that is, comic characters do not have an equal standing with the author and appreciator, but are looked down upon.) This unequal relation again enlarges the psychical distance between the two, demanding that the experienced psychical experience be taken as the object of critical examination. Thus, the relation of being neither close to nor distant from the object helps create a unique effect: “making the reader unsure whether it is written about someone other than himself, so that he at once shoves it off and becomes a spectator, yet suspects that it is written about himself, and also about everyone, and from this opens a road of reflection.” [22]

From the above example, we have already touched on another important literary strategy for regulating the reader's psychical distance and controlling the reading effect — namely, “defamiliarization.” The Russian Formalist literary theorist Shklovsky says: “The existence of what is called art is precisely to recover the sense of liveliness, to make us feel things, to make the stone more stone-like. The aim of art is to provide a sensation of things — that is, an illusion — and not a recognition. The ‘defamiliarization’ procedure of things, and the procedure of increasing the difficulty and time of perception so as to make the form difficult, is precisely the procedure of art, for the reception process in art has its own purpose, and ought to be slow. Art is a way of experiencing the making of a thing; the made thing in art does not matter.” [23] “Defamiliarization” is a departure from the reader's original experience; it breaks the perceptual dulling and “automatization” caused by habit, and makes the “familiar-to-the-point-of-stale,” the “seen-but-unseen” things re-arouse attention and become the object of the reader's perception. That is, “defamiliarization” takes what has already turned into the reader's own habitual experience and, in an unfamiliar form, draws it back to the position of a perceived object, creating a distance between reader and object. This theory is an important content of Russian Formalist literary theory; it is often used to strengthen the artistic form of literary works and bring their artistic features to the fore.

On this, Bakhtin holds a critical attitude. Aiming at Shklovsky's Formalist analysis of Tolstoy's work Kholstomer (Strider), he points out: “The thing that is made strange is not made strange for the sake of the thing itself, not so as to feel it, not so as to ‘make the stone become stone,’ but for the sake of another ‘thing,’ for the sake of moral value; this value, just like ideological meaning, will appear stronger and clearer against this background.” [24] Bakhtin's view is diametrically opposed to that of Formalism. In his analysis of the defamiliarization in Kholstomer, Bakhtin's view is obviously more persuasive than Shklovsky's. In this novel, the author does not directly depict the phenomenon of private property, which people have long taken for granted and held to be reasonable, but looks at it through the eyes of a horse that does not know what private property is, making these phenomena become absurd and hard to understand. Thereupon, the critique of the irrationality and immorality of private property is strengthened in this defamiliarization. Here, “defamiliarization” is indeed mainly not for the sake of artistic form, of literariness, but brings to the fore the work's moral-critical value. But Bakhtin's wholesale negation of Formalism's “defamiliarization” theory on this account falls into another one-sidedness.

Brecht applied the defamiliarization theory to drama and further proposed the “alienation effect” (Verfremdungseffekt): “The alienated reflection is this kind of reflection: the object is universally known, but at the same time it is presented as strange… Without doubt, this alienation effect prevents resonance from arising.” [25] Because drama is a direct display without intermediary, its distance from the event is smaller than ordinary narration. Zhu Guangqian holds that, among the various arts, “the one whose ‘distance’ is closest is drama, because it presents human affairs before the eyes by extremely concrete means.” [26] The alienation method is precisely to add obstacles in the direct exchange between stage and audience, enlarging the distance between drama and audience. Differing from Formalism, Brecht does not focus only on artistic form, but lays more stress on content. He warmly advocated the epic theatre, especially the educational drama (Lehrstück). This new dramatic form, adopting the technique of defamiliarization, “does not permit the audience, out of pure sympathy and without any criticism, again to sink into the experience of the stage role.” [27] Wang Caiyong once accurately summed up Brecht's “alienation effect”: “Alienation is precisely difference from reality; this alienation from reality makes the spectator adopt an attitude of active exploration toward drama. Therefore, in Brecht's words, his epic theatre (a translation of Lehrstück / epic drama — translator) is precisely, by abstracting away a process or the taken-for-granted, universally-known, and clearly-understood factors of a character image, to make the spectator feel surprise and curiosity toward it, and to lead the spectator to adopt an exploring, critical attitude toward the process or character displayed, thereby grasping the truth the drama displays.” [28]

From the above comparison it can be seen that “defamiliarization” creates a distance between reader and object, making the object come to the fore and become the object of attention, perception, and appraisal. As for whether it is the work's aesthetic value, moral value, or cognitive value that is brought to the fore, this depends on how, and on which level, defamiliarization is used. When defamiliarization is applied at the phonetic level, it brings the value of that level to the fore. The important aesthetic value of poetic rhythm is precisely the result of defamiliarizing everyday language by means of rhythm. To deliberately violate the habitual usage of words makes the derived or added meaning of words rich in vitality. A strange metaphor again brings the relation of tenor and vehicle to the fore, drawing the reader's attention to this relation and thereby arousing the reader's rich imagination. Likewise, the aesthetic function of plot in a narrative work is the result of plot's defamiliarizing the story. Formalist theory precisely stresses defamiliarization at these levels. On the contrary, if defamiliarization is applied to the depiction of social phenomena containing moral norm and moral consciousness, the result is different. Through the emphasis on these morally significant phenomena, it brings the work's moral value to the fore. Tolstoy's Kholstomer is precisely so. Again, as in the above-mentioned The True Story of Ah Q, Lu Xun grasps Ah Q's soul — the “method of spiritual victory” — and enlarges it, thereby pushing this base-rootedness, in a startling way, before readers long since numb to it; making the “familiar-to-the-point-of-blindness” thing re-arouse attention, become the object of the reader's perception — that is, “defamiliarization,” which takes what has already become the reader's own habitual experience and, in an unfamiliar form, draws it back again to the position of a perceived object, creating a distance between reader and object.

Literary works, especially satirical and comic works, by means of the exaggeration, deformation, and other defamiliarizing strategies they use, awaken the reader's reason and create a distance between reader and the work's characters, making the characters become the object of examination and criticism — that is, the “spectated” object rather than the “shared” object. The thought-notion, value-attitude, and moral norm embodied by these characters thereby also show their flaws, are negated, and are mocked together with the characters. Satire and comedy thus often, through the negation of negative thought-notion, value-attitude, and moral norm, arouse the reader's pursuit of a new spiritual realm, and thereby realize the work's educational function. Moreover, because of the changes in the way and degree of this defamiliarization, it can also create different distances between the reader and different character-images, and thereby regulate the reader's tendency. For example, Granny Liu in Dream of the Red Chamber: because the author adopted comic technique to depict her, the reader may identify and resonate with Baoyu, Daiyu, Baochai, and even the Lady Dowager, while always keeping a layer of distance from Granny Liu, often unawares viewing her through the eyes of Baoyu and the others, taking her as the object of appraisal and mockery. The difference in the technique of depicting different characters also reveals Cao Xueqin's own emotional attitude; although this is a kindly laughter, it is, after all, a kind of laughter from a position of looking down, evidently quite different from the author's attitude toward Baoyu and Daiyu.

Of course, the effect of defamiliarization is by no means always negation. It mainly awakens the appreciator's reason and maintains the distance between appreciator and object, so as to make an appraisal of the object. Hegel's so-called grasping of comedy requires a rational heart; Meredith holds that comedy “laughs through the mind, and it is the mind that directs it,” [29] precisely stressing the feature that comic defamiliarization can arouse the reader's rational-critical spirit. For example, the exaggerating, absurd technique adopted in Cervantes' Don Quixote makes Don Quixote and that age's moral standards and behavioral norms come especially vividly before the reader's eyes, and thereby make full mockery of Don Quixote together with the medieval chivalric style, while also praising his indomitable pursuit of his faith.

The narrative point of view of a work is also an important strategy for controlling the distance between reader and character. When a work adopts a character's point of view, it often powerfully makes the reader view the world from the angle of the character who is the narrator, see others, and judge others by that character's value-standard. This produces an inequality in the reader's reception of the character who is the narrator and the other characters. Rimmon-Kenan holds: “The ideology of the narrator–focalizer is usually taken to be authoritative, while all the other ideologies in the text are evaluated from this ‘higher’ position of the narrator–focalizer.” [30] Because the narrator is in the background of the reader's horizon, his influence on the reader is invisible, and also profound and powerful; while the other characters, in the foreground, are appraised. Thereupon, the reader's reception of the notion-attitude of the appraised object — that is, the “spectated” object — is necessarily selective, and may even be flatly rejected. This choice or rejection is, to a great degree, again influenced by the character who is the narrator.

The influence of narrative point of view on the reader is enormous. In The Metamorphosis, Kafka, by the strategy of defamiliarization, depicts the absurd event of the protagonist Gregor suddenly turning into a beetle. This strategy creates a distance, pushing the inconceivable event of “a man turning into a beetle” startlingly before the reader's eyes; but because the novel makes abundant use of Gregor's point of view, this again deepens the reader's sympathy for Gregor, makes him feel with Gregor's heart, and effectively pushes the world in which Gregor is placed, his relations with the various people around him, and the bitter experience of these relations, to a more prominent foreground position, constituting a double image, thereby carrying out an extremely powerful critique of the dreadful, immoral phenomenon of human alienation produced by modern Western society and various interpersonal relations; and the reader too is deeply benefited from it. Generally, in the reading process the reader stands in a “sharing” relation with the narrator and a “spectating” relation with the narrated object. But if the narrative point of view switches frequently, the reader too is alienated from the “sharing” relation. Of course, the narrator is not always authoritative. When the author deliberately creates a contradictory gap between the notion and attitude of the narrator and of the work's implied author, making the narration itself become an unreliable narration, an ironic structure is constituted; and thereupon the narrator too is stripped of authority and becomes an examined, appraised object. As Wallace Martin points out: “Irony can pull open a distance without any feeling, maintaining an Olympian-god-like calm, watching the reader perhaps still sympathize with the human weakness; it may also be destructive, even submerging the ironic author too in its aftermath.” [31] Qian Zhongshu's Fortress Besieged is a typical example. In Fortress Besieged, the author uses several narrative points of view. On the whole, the novel uses the omniscient point of view; but in the detailed depiction, it makes abundant use of the third-person limited point of view, observing in considerable measure through the eyes of Fang Hongjian, experiencing, thinking, and appraising with Fang Hongjian's heart. This character's point of view arouses the reader's sympathy for Fang Hongjian, and by Fang Hongjian's measure appraises the host of literary buffoons, constituting a conflict in thought-notion, value-attitude, and moral norm between the reader, Fang Hongjian, and the other characters, making the host of buffoons the object of mockery. And the use of the omniscient point of view in turn makes Fang Hongjian an examined, satirized object, constituting a conflict between the omniscient author and Fang Hongjian. The multiple points of view thus formed — the character-image in the omniscient author's view overlapping and interweaving with the image in the work's character's view — produce an intricate, complex effect of thought-notions, value-systems, and moral norms. Because, on one hand, the omniscient author does not approve of Fang Hongjian's notion, taking Fang Hongjian likewise as a satirized object; on the other hand, the work makes more use of Fang Hongjian's point of view and arouses the reader's sympathy and even identification with him; then the author's satire and negation of Fang Hongjian also at the same time point toward the reader himself, constituting not only a conflict between author and Fang Hongjian but also a conflict, to a certain degree, between author and reader. And people often stubbornly hold their own viewpoint, and they in turn come to doubt the author's standard. Fortress Besieged precisely fully uses the regulating role of narrative point of view, producing a mutual conflict of notion-attitudes among reader, author, and the work's characters, revealing from it the flaws of each party, reaching an unprecedented height of satirical art, and embodying the author's thorough critical spirit. This negation of original thought-notions, value-standards, and moral norms prompts the reader to seek a new spiritual realm.

In addition, the role of the work's narrative manner cannot be neglected. Tolstoy laid great stress on this. He greatly esteemed Maupassant's A Woman's Life, holding that the success of the novel lies “not only in that everything is written vividly and beautifully, but in that there is, within all this, a heartfelt, moving tone that involuntarily affects the reader.” [32] The “heartfelt, moving tone” that runs through the work is precisely a kind of narrative manner. In a work the author may be hidden or manifest, may have a poet-like surging passion, or be cool like a dissecting anatomist, deep like a thinker… all such things become conspicuous features of the work's narrative manner and effective textual strategies for regulating the psychical distance of reading. Modern Chinese writers Ba Jin, Lao She, and Mao Dun each have their unique narrative manner. Ba Jin's narration is like a surging current of impassioned emotion; with enormous emotional force it sweeps the reader in, carrying him to clamor, weep, struggle, and strive together with the work's characters. This impassioned narration makes the reader cling to the characters under his pen and be affected by their thought and emotion. Lao She's humorous yet bitter narration is different; it creates a neither-close-nor-distant, both-entering-and-departing distance between reader and character, so that the reader both sympathizes with and mocks them. Mao Dun's cool, rational narration pulls open the distance between reader and object, arousing the reader's rational critical attitude, dissecting characters and society together with the author, and thereby gaining instruction and making a choice. The novels of Ba Jin, Lao She, and Mao Dun all have an enormous educational power, but they are received in different ways and to different degrees.

The factors that influence the educational function of a literary work are manifold and complex; they often interweave, and in mutual interaction jointly regulate the realization of the educational function. Of course, our discussion of the educational function from the angle of textual strategy by no means says that the realization of the educational function is the sole aim of literary creation, nor that the educational function of literature is decided one-sidedly by literary strategy; it is meant to explain that the educational function, as an important constituent of the system of literary functions, is closely bound up with literary strategy.

From the historical process of literature's development, the position of the educational function within the system of literary functions, and the literary strategy suited to it, are ceaselessly changing. Taking Western literature as an example, on the whole the educational function of literature has gone through a process of gradual strengthening and then weakening. Primal literature, because it condensed human experience, desire, and the fear of various taboos, in fact had the meaning of admonition. The educational function of literature (though a negative value) was strengthened in the church literature of the Middle Ages. Because church literature was suffused with religious-mystical coloring, the reader was necessarily in a reverent, worshipping psychology in reading. This is a one-sided indoctrination, of which instruction is the aim, literature being but means and shell; even in the heroic epic, the standing of reader and author is disparate, for the hero the author chooses is the model the reader emulates, and there fundamentally exists no freedom of choice for the reader. Only after literature took the ordinary person as its object, and depicting man as its center, did the educational function of literature and its textual strategy grow ever more complex. Within this there exists a change from the author's direct intervention to his withdrawal. With the author's concealment and the intricacy of the mutual relations between reader and work, textual strategy to a degree took the place of the author who directly leaked out and guided; the relation among reader, author, and the work's characters gradually tended toward an equal exchange rather than one-directional indoctrination. In some contemporary works, because of the increase of textual blanks and indeterminacy, or because the author deliberately dissolves the work's tendency with self-contradictory value-orientations, the educational function of literature is, to a degree, weakened; but the educational function of literature does not thereby perish — it is only realized in a new form.

The historical evolution of the educational function of literature and the textual strategy suited to it is a rather complex problem — one that a single essay can no longer expound in detail.