Racial and Regional Identities Reflected in Eudora Weltys A Curtain of Green and Other Stories 析尤多拉·韦尔蒂的短篇小说集《绿帘》中的种族和地域身份认同文献综述

 2022-01-05 07:01

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文献综述

1. Introduction1.1 Research backgroundEudora Welty (1909-2001), an American short story writer, novelist and photographer, was one of the most famous contemporary American woman writers in the 20th century and a representative figure of Southern literature. Being a prolific writer who created stories in multiple genres, Welty was deeply concerned about the dramatic changes in the social life of the South and her family and vividly showed the various styles and features of American Southern society in the 20th century in her works. A curtain of green and other stories, which contains 17 pieces of short stories, was Weltys first collection of short stories and her representative masterpiece in her early stage. It established her leading position in American literature and deepened her influence as a Southern writer. A curtain of green and other stories, first published in 1941, mainly reflected the real life in American South in the 1930s. The 1930s was a special period in American history, during which the Great Depression and Roosevelt's New Deal took place. American South was influenced by the Great Depression, which broke out in 1929, particularly severely. The economy of American South, which had not fully recovered since the end of the Civil War, suffered a heavy blow again. And a series of serious natural disasters caused by wind and drought added the misfortune. For survival, thousands of southerners moved to the West Coast. In addition, this period was full of racial contradictions and conflicts, especially in the South, which promoted the African American movement and laid the foundation for the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. During the Great Depression, in the south, blacks found themselves in a unique situation. Not only were faced with economic hardships, but they also had to deal with the racism and mistreatment (Gordon, 1979:388). Statistics showed that black unemployment rate were two or three times as much as that of the white in the South. The slogan Last hired, first fired, which summed up the situation of the blacks, circulated everywhere. Due to the impact of the economic crisis and the fact that southern white society had established an impressive arsenal of measures to restrict and control blacks, massive southern blacks migrated from rural to urban, from the south to the north, which named as Great Migration (Tolnay＆Beck, 1992:104). In these stories of A curtain of green and other stories, Welty examined the state of Mississippi through the eyes of its inhabitants, the common people, both black and white, and presented a realistic view of the racial relations that existed at the time. Reading this collection is like exploring the history of the 1930s American South.1.2 Literature reviewAs one of the representatives of American Southern writers in the 20th century, Eudora Welty is a person who cannot be separated from the study of southern literature. Marrs (2005) calls her perhaps the most honoraried writer in the history of American letters. Welty published five novels and eight collections of short stories in her life. Ruth M. Vande Kiefts influential critical biography --- Eudora Welty (1962) is the best book to introduce Welty, which studies Welty's works from the perspectives of structure, form and theme. Besides Weltys most famous novel The optimists daughter, her early masterpiece, A curtain of green and other stories is also one of the important research objects. In this collection, Welty broke through the limitations to observe the Southern society, portrayed various characters in the Southern society, brought the changes and complexity of characters relationship into her own observation, and described vividly and naturally the local conditions and customs of American Southern towns. Scholars at home and abroad mainly focus on the narrative style, characterization and spiritual dilemma in the novel. Compared with domestic researches, foreign researches started their research on this collection since the 20th century, covering a range of perspectives, which was much earlier and more comprehensive. Apart from the conventional and basic research directions such as personas, content, themes, structure and writing skills, the comparison between works of the same period or the same type and the exploration of southern society in Weltys works are also the common research interests about this collection. At home, the relevant research papers and academic articles that can be found are basically concentrated in the past fifteen years. Some scholars focus on the analysis of characters in each story. Mao Li (2010) thinks that Welty depicts a group of small people who came from the bottom of southern American society, physically and mentally deformed, slightly pessimistic but credible, amiable and not desperate. Some scholars are keen to explore the overall theme of the collection and the theme of asingle story in the collection. Hu (2010) suggests that A curtain of green and other stories shows the great mental shock which the ordinary people had to undergo in that given settings of society and times and the physical and spiritual pressure which they had to suffer from the capitalist industrial civilization. The issue of race is more or less covered in many articles and papers. From Keela, the outcast Indian maiden and A curtain of green, it can be seen that black male immigrants have no status or power in the southern society, and their life situation is very embarrassing (Zhu, 2018:24). A worn path not only symbolically reappears the historical identity of the black people in the south of the United States, but also objectively reveals the real situation of the black Americans after the abolition of slavery (Guo,2010:117). Keela, the outcast Indian maiden shows a dramatization of racial abuse in society, both native American and an African American (Claxton, 2011: 550). The southern society in her works, mainly referring to Mississippi, is very distinctive in southern literature. Elmo Howell, a famous foreign researcher, focused on the uniqueness of regional setting in Weltys novels and the rich connotation of the southern social environment. Domestic studies on this aspect mainly focus on her other works, such as The golden apples and Delta wedding.Generally speaking, although there were some researchers engaged with the topic of race, most of them only focused on a single story in the collection, and some of them only referred to it as an auxiliary content. From the perspective of racial identities, there is still room for research in the aspect of horizontal comparison of the relationship between stories and vertical in-depth excavation. There is still a lot of research space on the point of penetration of regional identities. At present, it is worthwhile to combine these two breakthrough points to study.1.3 Need of the studyThrough the analysis of racial and regional identities reflected in A curtain of green and other stories, we can see the real social life in Mississippi during mid-twentieth century, exploring the real life of the left behind and the runaways, and the different races in the declining Southern society. At the same time, we can also find Weltys views and thoughts on the situation in Mississippi, where she was born and grew up. At present, the domestic scholars have not studied much about A curtain of green and other stories and have not formed a complete research system. This thesis, to some extent, is helpful for the research of racial and regional themes in A curtain of green and other stories. At the same time, this paper also aims to provide data and perspectives for the study of southern literature through the study of the racial and regional identity in A curtain of green and other stories.ReferencesBorchardt, M. (2013). Place, race, and modernism in the works of E.M. Forster and Eudora Welty Rochester (Doctoral dissertation). Georgia State University, Georgia.Claxton, M. (2011). Inside/Outside the tent: Native Americans and African Americans on display in Eudora Weltys Keela, the outcast Indian maiden. Mississippi quarterly, 64(3-4), 549-563.Flower, D. (2007). Eudora Welty and Racism. The Hudson review, 60(2), 325-332.Gordon, L. (1979). A brief look at blacks in depression Mississippi, 1929-1934: Eyewitness accounts. The journal of negro, 64(4), 377-390.Hudderr, C. (2016). Race, nature, and decapitation in Eudora Weltys A curtain of green. Eudora Welty review, 28, 45-67.Kirby, J. (1984). Black and white in the rural south, 1915-1954. 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胡松（2010），试析《绿色的帷幕及其他故事》中的主题思想，《广西民族师范学院学报》，27（4）：45-47。

唐伟胜（2019），早期韦尔蒂的地方诗学: 重读《一个旅行推销员之死》，《外语教学》，40（1）：100-104。

王丽蓉（2019），尤多拉韦尔蒂《老路》的女性生态美及生态隐喻,《黎明职业大学学报》，103（2）：29-32。

朱燕（2018）， 对种族歧视的妥协尤多拉韦尔蒂《绿帘》中的黑人男性外来者研究,《兰州教育学院学报》，34（3）：32-37。

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