Study on the “Defamiliarization” Narrative in Mo Yan’s Novel the Republic of Wine

Mo Yan understands the narration of defamiliarization profoundly. With his extraordinary creative personality, compassionate human feelings, and unique aesthetic judgment, he makes pioneering exploration and innovation in his novel The Republic of Wine. The defamiliarization of the novel’s language is firstly reflected in the change of the name, and the renewal of the semantic connotation gives the work a “new” and “defamiliarized” characteristic. As the core imagery and aesthetic element, the meaning of “wine” extends to the connotation and reflection of nationality. At the same time, the novel’s ironic rhetoric gives the plain words a strong critical meaning. Furthermore, the novel adopts a variable narrative point of view and a changing narrative subject, so that the story presents a rich plurality in pursuing the value of the subject and exploring artistic methods, overflowing with the brilliance of interweaving the real and the fantastic, overlapping the realistic and the absurd, reflecting the torture of human nature and the search for the soul in a defamiliarized expression with modern temperament and contemporary spirit.


Introduction
Mo Yan's The Republic of Wine is considered "a book with deep and symbolic meaning." [1] Mo Yan also said, "I am actually quite satisfied with the structure of The Republic of Wine. On the one hand, it has a strong social criticism intention, and on the other hand, it has a variety of language parodies, playfully imitating various genres of the time." The author sets up a structure of real and imaginary, which gives The Republic of Wine a great sense of absurdity. The "defamiliarized" language, diverse narrative points of view, and diverse narrative subjects coincide with the author's desire to express his sadness for the country and his strong social criticism. The defamiliarization of the narrative in The Republic of Wine creates a mysterious, eerie, horrible and attractive literary world. It can be noted that the concept of "defamiliarization" was introduced by Shklovsky, and Brecht further expanded its depth at the textual level by combining it with theater theory, which was continuously refined and developed by his successors. Mo Yan, however, "opens the way to a pure literary writing that returns to the weight and depth of words in an extraordinary and highly perceptible form of defamiliarization." [2] From the theory of "defamiliarization," this paper focuses on the embodiment, formation, and effect of the "defamiliarization" technique in The Republic of Wine, trying to explore how Mo Yan expresses his discoveries and reflections in the story of The Republic of Wine, a mixture of reality and fiction, and uses the creation of the textual world to complete his artistic critique of the real society, culture and human nature. [3]

Language InnovationꞏRealistic CriticismꞏIronic Tension
The "defamiliarization" of The Republic of Wine is mainly due to the defamiliarization of its language. Mo Yan's artistic processing of a certain event through "perverse" descriptions gives the work a "new" and "defamiliarized" reading effect. The use of language defamiliarization in The Republic of Wine is firstly reflected in the change of names. Specifically, "the first is the temporary creation of new words, the second is the temporary creation of new uses, and the third is the replacement or updating of ready-made words with descriptive or explanatory phrases, or the breaking up of the usual combination of words and phrases through the intentional accumulation of idioms, idioms or colloquialisms" [4]. There are many examples of this in The Republic of Wine, for example, "Goodbye, little girl. I have the finest fertilizers, specially to improve the alkaline soil." [5] In this sentence, Ding Hooker uses a metaphor to refer to the "alkaline soil" as a woman's inability to get pregnant, giving the language a subtle beauty. Another example is "Fertilizers!" She grins and says, "You're still here, aren't you?" [6] "Fertilizer" refers to the ding hooker that can help infertile women regain their fertility. In addition, there are also the words "crash" as "let me kiss you" and so on. In this way, the literary language is constructed by means of defamiliarization, making the semantics newer, thus expanding the aesthetic distance between the reader and the language and creating a witty and humorous artistic effect. As Shklovsky says: "Adding new adjectives to old words to expand their meaning into a new series makes people's ears and eyes ...... feel the unusualness of things, thus changing their usual view of it." [7] It is worth noting that Mo Yan breaks the norms of word usage not only to touch people's hearts, but also to better realize the epithet function on the basis of a more contextual meaning and to strengthen the expressive power of language. Mo Yan's technique of dealing with linguistic defamiliarization makes The Republic of Wine possess a richer allegorical meaning and a fresh quality while breaking the shackles of preexistence.
The German theorist Brecht defined "defamiliarization" as "an artistic technique that evokes a novel artistic sensation" [8] and then moved the aesthetic category of "defamiliarization" to the field of social criticism. He then moved the aesthetic category of "defamiliarization" to the field of social criticism. Thanks to Brecht's creative change, the theory of defamiliarization became a means to intervene in life and criticize reality, to integrate into the broad social life. In The Republic of Wine, this concept of critical reality is fully implemented. In the world of The Republic of Wine, wine is food, and wine is the passport to this mysterious country. Mo Yan says that he originally wanted to write only about the relationship between wine and human life, but only after writing did he realize that this was difficult to achieve, because his initial motivation for writing was rooted in a strong sense of social responsibility. From the wine jug that Ding Hooker carries with him, to Dr. Li Yidou, an alcoholic doctor in the brewing college, to the legend of the wine moth that Yu Yizhu narrates, and finally the writer "Mo Yan" attends the wine banquet. The central imagery of "wine" throughout the text carries the writer's criticism of the social status quo of official corruption and heroic drinking but ineffective rectification, and thus has a metaphorical overtone. Because "an 'image' can be transformed into a metaphor once, but if it is repeated as a presentation and reproduction, it becomes a symbol, or even part of a symbolic system." [9] Whether it is Li Yidou's sober intoxication, Ding Hooker's unconscious drunkenness, or the writer Mo Yan's initiative to let Vice Mayor Wang pour wine into his mouth and feel grateful, they all point directly to the ignorance and numbness of national nature for thousands of years. The Republic of Wine is thus not only a virtual world described by language, but also has a strong otherness as well as rich historical and cultural connotation and artistic content. The authenticity of the social environment of The Republic of Wine seems to be a metaphor and a question to the real world.
In addition, the effect of "defamiliarization" creates the tension of irony. Irony is understood as "a rhetorical strategy of euphemism, negation and concealment chosen by the author to maintain a balance between the complex elements of the object of expression in terms of content and form, phenomenon and essence, and so on." [10] The far-fetched rhetoric of King Kong Diamond and others in their toasts to Ding Hooker, and the culture of The Republic of Wine introduced by Li Yidou to writer Mo Yan, are refractions of the corruption of real life. However, when we find that the object of these rhetoric is so unpleasant, we experience the deviation of the serious political discourse from the dirty reality, and the opposite of the connotation and extension creates a great ironic tension. This tension is not limited to the narrative effect brought by the defamiliarized writing of "wine", but is also used in the writing of "food". For example, in Li Yidou's novel Donkey Avenue, the "Whole Donkey Banquet" and the famous dish "Dragon and Phoenix" in the "One Size Hotel" are actually just expensive condiments without the gorgeous packaging of their names. The name of the dish is not the flashy packaging, these expensive condiments are actually just genitalia. As for the details of "Cooking Class", Li Yidou's mother-in-law teaches her students to cook the dish of braised babies, which is even more surprising. The irony in the content of the novel is like a light of the soul, reflecting a splendid artistic world, and Mo Yan, the wonderful narrator, is able to use irony to reach a critique of reality and a reflection of human nature.

Narrative PerspectiveꞏNarrative SubjectꞏNoise of Crowd
Narrative perspective refers to "the particular vision and perspective from which a work or a text sees the world." [11] It is expressed in the four elements of "who is telling the story when the act of narrating a story takes place, in whose eyes the story is told, whose story is told, and to whom the story is told." [12] The narrative perspective of The Republic of Wine is fluid, dominated by an omniscient point of view, with a limited omniscient narrative, sometimes using a "metafictional" [13] narrative strategy, multiple narrative points of view and a unique narrative intelligence that escapes the barriers of artistic genres and transcends the dichotomy of good and evil, beauty and ugliness, etc. in human nature, creating a vibrant world of the Republic of Wine from multiple levels.
The first thing to notice is that the novel uses an omniscient and omnipotent perspective outside the text to explain the circumstances surrounding the arrival of the protagonist, senior detective Ding Hooker, in Sakoku City to investigate a major incident in which a senior official cooked a baby. The novel tells the story of Ding Hooker's relationship with a spirited and rude female driver on the way, who later kills the person and commits a capital crime, and finally falls into an open pit and is buried. Using this perspective, the author overrides the novel and uses his "golden eye" to observe the words, actions and heart of the main character, Ding Hooker: "He felt his spirit like a potato full of young blue shoots, dripping and slithering rolled into her basket." [14] The narrative effect of defamiliarization is reflected in his bold language, which also makes readers feel that Mo Yan's characters are not vague, airy fabrications, but have a sense of "down-to-earth" reality.
In the meantime, Mo Yan also uses the limited-knowledge perspective to narrate the story. Sometimes the narrator becomes a vajra, for example, at the beginning of Chapter 4: "Dear friends and students, when I learned that I had been appointed as a visiting professor at the University of Brewing, the immense honor was like a warm spring breeze in the cold winter months, blowing over my bare heart, my green intestines, my green lungs, and my purple, hard-working liver." [15] Borrowing from this shift in narrative point of view, Mo Yan brings out the image of Vajra's eagerness to pay compliments, to speak exaggerated official words, and to be inconsistent in appearance. Sometimes this point of view of the nearly unconscious Ding Hooker is used to see the scene in which he is taken to the room by the service girls: "They took me in and the door closed. Sure enough, it was an elevator, descending rapidly. I thought admiringly ...... The intense white light shone out of my eyes ......" [16] After Ding Hooker is beaten up for cheating with the female driver after being crashed by Diamond, this perspective is also used to reveal Ding Hooker's inner thoughts, in a huge contrast of contexts, to strengthen the ironic tension of the words is enhanced by the huge contrast in the context: "Remembering the diamond, remembering the sacred mission, gnashing my teeth. Go! Sleeping with your wife is a matter of life style, and cooking babies is the worst crime." [17] In the novel Li Yidou sends to "writer Mo Yan" to describe the prodigy, the character Li Yidou becomes the narrator: "The image he establishes as soon as he appears: a boy's body of less than three feet, a dense, stiff head of hair, two conspiratorial eyes, two thick, large ears, and a hoarse voice. voice." [18] The interweaving of the external story and the internal psychological activity of the characters in the text creates a relatively complex narrative.
Mo Yan's ability to make a simple story treacherous is also due to his skillful use of multiple eyes to focus on the same thing. A typical example is the narrative of the middle-aged writer "Mo Yan" on his way to the city of Sakaguni. The novel begins with a characterization of Mo Yan from an omniscient and omnipotent perspective outside the text: "Lying in the comfort -as opposed to the hard seat -of the hard sleeper middle berth, his physique was in a state of shock. Mo Yan, a middleaged writer with a swollen physique, thinning hair, tiny eyes, and a tilted mouth, was not the least bit sleepy." [19] Mo Yan writes from his own perspective: "I am like a hermit crab, and 'Mo Yan' is the shell I live in." [20] In this one incident, the point of view of the narrative is constantly changed, and the characteristics of different points of view are used to give a multi-point perspective to the characters, making them three-dimensional, so that the narrative achieves the effect of "defamiliarization".
In addition, Mo Yan consciously explores "metafiction" to expose the sources and narrative origins of his stories, resulting in "intertextual" narrative features in which the characters are divided into narrative segments. For example, in Child Prodigy, it is written, "Gentlemen, our story has actually begun a long time ago." [21] At the beginning of Caiyan, the reader is immersed in the discussion of his mother-in-law's immortality and youthfulness, and then he suddenly interrupts the reader's thoughts and inserts a paragraph that reads, "according to the popular narrative style of fiction nowadays, I can say that our story is about to begin." Li Yidou often breaks away from the original storytelling perspective to show the narrator's behavior, interrupting the novel's normal narrative with self-discussion, telling the reader that the story is fictional, thus exposing the story's creative thinking and giving the reader an unfamiliar feeling. The multiplicity of narrative points of view reflects Mo Yan's ingenious thinking and artistic techniques, and confirms Mo Yan's statement, "There is one thing I always insist on, and that is personalized writing and personalized works." [22] The subject is "the source of the subjective perception, awareness, judgment, opinion, etc. expressed" [23]. The identity of the narrator in a story is generally of two kinds: one is as an outsider looking down on the whole, and the other is as the person in the play who is narrating part of the plot. The diversity of narrative subjects means that "the characters of the narrative, both primary and secondary, occupy a part of the subject's consciousness. The narrator is not necessarily the most important spokesperson for the subject, but his or her voice cannot be ignored. And there may be more than one narrator." [24]. Mo Yan once said, "It is not considered superior to the characters in his own work." [25] The Republic of Wine fuses the traditional narrative resources inherent in China's homeland with Western modernist writing techniques to create a diverse and ever-changing narrative subject.
The novel includes the main body of the narrative that tells of Ding Hooker's investigation of the baby-eating case: "Ding Hooker hurriedly read the letter of denunciation composed of the man's defamiliarized and odd handwriting, apparently written in his left hand." [26] As an extra-textual narrator, he controls the fate of the characters and the course of the story. At the same time, the main narrative of the correspondence between a doctoral student in the brewing school of the city of Sakaguni, who goes by the pseudonym "Li Yidou," and "Mo Yan" is inserted into the text, in which Li Yidou cynically writes: "Teacher, last night, I I wrote another novel entitled Meat Boy. In this novel, I think I have used Lu Xun's brushwork in a pure way, turning a pen in my hand into a sharp knife with a cow's ear, peeling off the skin of a gorgeous spiritual civilization and revealing the core of a cruel moral barbarism." [27] This narrative subject is used to summarize the main theme of Li Yidou's nine novels, which then leads to the narrative subject of these novels. In their correspondence, the two men also share their views on literary creation and literary criticism, which also includes their mutual praise and evaluation of wine. The content of these letters is closely related to the story of the novel written by "writer Mo Yan," who takes the initiative to admit in his correspondence that "the long novel I am working on has reached the most difficult stage, and that ghostly senior scout has been working against me at every turn, so I don't know whether to let him shoot himself or simply die drunk. Well, in the last chapter, I let him get drunk again". [28] It can be seen that the character of the novel, Mo Yan, has become the narrative subject of the novel. In this regard, Mo Yan also discusses that he believes that The Republic of Wine takes into account the relationship between the narrative subject and the writer, and that the supreme narrative subject in the novel is the writer Mo Yan, but this Mo Yan is different from the real Mo Yan. He is both the narrative subject and a character in the novel.
In the last chapter, there is also a narrator who can see everything. This narrator tells the story of "writer Mo Yan" who replies to Li Yidou's letter, travels to the city of wine, and arrives at The Republic of Wine to go shopping with Li Yidou and attend a luncheon in a calm tone, giving the characters a multifaceted image. For example, the second and third sections of the text use the direct dialogue form of "Mo Yan says," "Li Yidou says," and "Yu Yizhu says" to show the "greasy, wellgroomed" Hu. The story is based on the original story. Based on the original story, the appearance of this narrative subject allows the text to constantly add new clues and new conflicts, in the process of deconstruction and reconstruction, so that the fictionality of the story itself is questioned, the absurdity of the plot and the complexity of human nature are more prominent, and the overall effect of intertwining fiction and truth is presented.
[29] Like Dostoevsky's novel, The Republic of Wine has a number of separate and disparate consciousnesses that are indistinguishable from each other, or what Bakhtin called "polyphony. "Polyphony" is also called "polyphony", which is a musical term. According to Bakhtin, "one of the outstanding features of the 'monologue' novel is that the many personalities and destinies form a unified objective world, which unfolds in layers under the unified will of the author." [30] In the Republic of Wine, although the main characters Ding Hooker and Li Yidou are both objects depicted by the author, they have a fairly strong sense of self, each with their own characteristics, some selfpossessed and weak, some misbehaving and proud, each expressing their opinions equally, and fundamentally constituting a unified subject. The plurality of narrative subjects breaks the reader's reading experience and reading expectation horizon, so that the discussion is not limited to the function of portraying characters or unfolding the plot, and the work can reflect the real state of human nature in the real society. The pluralistic narrative subject makes the characters in the novel no longer "flat' images, but with human blood, making the novel a "symphony" of polyphonic chorus, playing a compassionate sound of interweaving good and evil.

The Real and the ImaginaryꞏHumanity TrialꞏAesthetic Inspiration
Mo Yan appropriately uses the technique of "defamiliarization" to blur the "basic features" of the words in The Republic of Wine through experimentation with various genres and changes in everyday language usage and specific contexts. This technique brings out the color of fantasy in the work, so that people can see things with a poetic gaze, transcending all the stakes in real life. In Li Yidou's letter to "I", "A Splash of Heroism," the author uses a literary style: "I was sitting alone, crying, when I suddenly felt a stone sink beneath my body, thunder in my ears, and a golden light in front of me." [31] This kind of unique style of writing puts the narrative in a playful state, and the authenticity of the text is questioned, so the game between the real and the fantastic is particularly prominent.
In addition, the author does not use straightforward language, a single narrative subject and perspective to write, nor does he let the whole novel's theme become naked, otherwise it would dissolve its proper hidden meaning and aesthetic flavor of literature, but makes the sometimes playful words full of painful thoughts. For example, the bloody "baby feast" in the novel, as a symbol of memory, not only points to the traditional cultural memory of "cannibalism" written by Lu Xun, but also builds on the memory of the past and prefigures the future development of the "The Republic of Wine market". As a mnemonic symbol, it not only points to the traditional cultural memory of "eating people" written by Lu Xun, but also builds on the memory of the past and preconstructs the development prospect of the "The Republic of Wine market", with the cultural significance of the intersection of past, present and future. For example, the goblins in Li Yidou's book "have a treacherous, evil and ferocious smile on the corners of their mouths" [32]. They are presented in the the Republic of Wine with a sense of self-deprecation and freshness. The main character Ding Hooker tries to enter another "world" by going to the Republic of Wine to investigate the baby-eating case but is trapped in the food and sex of "The Republic of Wine", but always wanders in the periphery, unable to approach the case itself. Throughout the narrative, the writer downplays the truth of the case itself, but the details are extraordinarily realistic, giving the work an unattainable and dreamlike appearance. "Mo Yan is no longer a writer who can be summarized and described only by certain cultural or aesthetic neologisms, but has become an exceptionally multifaceted and fecund writer who encompasses almost all propositions in the vast field of complex humanities, history, morality and art." [33] Through the interweaving of the real and the fantastic, Mo Yan creates a tense aesthetic appeal and renders the many facets of life in the world.
"A good novelist is concerned with people in social life and their inescapable desires, as well as the difficult struggle of human beings trying to free themselves from the control of their desires." [34] Mo Yan is hyper-aware of the depravity of human nature that may be exposed under the impact of the tide of reform and opening up, and this concern is particularly well demonstrated in the Republic of Wine. Baby-eating is a shocking event in the Republic of Wine. In the ancient times, there were rumors of people "eating their sons" [35] during the war, and stories of demons and monsters trying to eat the flesh of the Longevity Monk to live forever. Such chilling events are difficult to expect in real life, but Mo Yan says that the absurd plot of "baby-eating" in the Republic of Wine comes from his regurgitation of youthful experiences and hometown experiences. In the text, Li Yidou's motherin-law is so obsessed with physical desire that her humanity is nearly extinguished, and the babies she is about to slaughter and cook are not actually human beings, but merely contracts of mutual consent. This almost crazy psychology undoubtedly increases the difficulty of artistic perception and reveals the author's profound reflection on the dark psychology and morbid desires common to power and human beings.
This kind of defamiliarized writing not only strengthens the power of literature to focus on reality, but also makes people feel the heterogeneous existence while re-sensitizing the daily plot, and actively ponder the connotation of the work at a deeper level. As Mr. Qian Zhongshu said in "The Art of Talking", "The so-called 'this article' is originally 'this nothing', as if the jade onion is peeled off layer by layer, the core of the inner content is not to be found." [36] On the surface, this blackand-white world is full of deviations and revolts, heroes fall and rampant rats, but when you think about it, what the novel wants to express is a reflection on human nature and a spur to slavery. Even in such a black hole of gourmets and abyss of human nature, there is no lack of light in The Republic of Wine. "Writer Mo Yan" faces a massage for a young woman and focuses his spirit on a pair of cold handcuffs to avoid making mistakes, suggesting the need to build a legally binding social system. Li Yidou withstands his mother-in-law's carnal temptations and does not break ethical taboos, believing that this degrades his identity as a "proper man", reflecting the positive role of traditional "humanistic indoctrination" in contemporary society. Mo Yan stands in the context of the time and examines the powers that be, the executioners, and the heroes, and also interrogates his own inability to overcome his human weaknesses, using the technique of "defamiliarization" to ask why irrational phenomena still exist in the real world, greatly enhancing the artistic charm and literary beauty of the novel. Mo Yan's defamiliarized narrative has a strong symbolic and philosophical connotation, which plays an important role in running the narrative, shaping the characters and creating a unique atmosphere, constructing a contemplation of human nature and soul, as well as "an understanding of life and the spirit of the subject of life." [37].

Conclusion
Zhang Qinghua has commented, "Mo Yan is then able to strive to construct his unique genre expression within a profound tacit understanding with traditional artistic elements, and this tacit and drawn relationship is not one-sided, isolated and fragmented, but rather a fusion and overall tangency based on an accurate grasp of its intrinsic artistic spirit.". Through its unique linguistic construction and narrative point of view, The Republic of Wine coalesces a defamiliarized narrative landscape. The comprehensive use of omniscient perspective, limited-knowledge perspective, and meta-narrative constructs a rich and thick, highly discursive and open literary world while escaping from monotonous narratives. The defamiliarized narrative of The Republic of Wine not only relates to the times and society, but also reflects Mo Yan's thoughts and ideas in the pursuit of narrative art. The use of irony and the change of narrative subjects serve as a distinctive window, making the novel characterized by the interplay of the real and the fantastic, and the interplay of reality and absurdity. Beyond the shell of core imagery such as wine, it also reveals the author's examination and reflection on reality and the national soul, as well as his compassion for all the world's faces, as Ding Hooker's meaningful epitaph says: "In the age of chaos and corruption, brothers, do not judge your own brothers.". The poetic world of The Republic of Wine, forged through defamiliarized narrative language and narrative point of view, is interspersed with unique aesthetic experiences, coalescing with Mo Yan's unique artistic inspiration and narrative wisdom, revealing spiritual secrets and glowing with unique charm.