Seeking a spiritual home for women---a comparative study of Chen Ran's and Amy Tan's fictions.
详细信息
文摘
With increasing cross-cultural infiltrations and accelerated interflows among people of all nationalities in this globalized world, the focus of comparative literature has experienced a shift from traditional Eurocentric cannons to a broader space incorporating literary works from marginalized cultures in its exploration of both particularities and commonalities. This dissertation aims to address the loss and reconstruction of womens self-identities as reflected in the fictions of contemporary Chinese woman writer Chen Ran and Chinese American woman writer Amy Tan. Drawing ideas from identity theories and postmodern feminist theories, the author compares the major motifs, rhetorical devices and writing strategies of the two writers. While conducting a comparative texual analysis of the three overriding themes including mother-daughter relationship, heterosexual relations and sisterhood, the author explores the evolution of literary representations on each theme in both Chinese and American literary traditions. Socio-historical parameters in cultural studies are also considered for a thorough understanding of such evolution that helps explain the similarities and differences between the two writers and the significant roles they play in their respective cultures. Apart from thematic comparisons, metaphorical implications in the protagonists dreams and illusions, the imageries of the mirror and birds are excavated to pinpoint the heroines subconscious identity crisis and an awakening female subjectivity in the fictional worlds of Chen Ran and Amy Tan. Based on a careful elaboration of Chen Rans personalized writing with a "gender-transcendent consciousness" and Amy Tans talk-story narrative of matrilineal tracing within specific social and history contexts, the author attempts to prove that both Chen Ran and Amy Tan could be interpreted from postmodern feminist perspectives in terms of their experimentation of a female discourse and deconstructive attacks on gender categories. Through personal narrations of a womans bodily experiences and existentialist modern predicament in Chens fictions as well as survival stories of Chinese American immigrants extending generations of mothers and daughters, the two writers have expressed their shared humanistic ideals for womens spiritual independence free from inequality and discrimination.