An Intertextual Reading of Reflections in a Golden Eye and The Prussian Officer 《金色眼睛的映像》和《普鲁士军官》的互文性解读文献综述

 2022-01-05 07:01

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文献综述

1.Introduction1.1 Research backgroundCarson McCullers (1917-1967) was one of the most controversial writers in American Southern Literature of the twentieth century. Her novels which frequently depict life in small towns of the southern United States as well as the themes of loneliness, homosexuality and spiritual isolation win herself both praise and attention.Reflections in a golden eye (1941) undoubtedly conveys the main themes of her literary works like spiritual isolation and homosexuality, showing the alienation of emotion and a kind of infeasible love in human beings. Reflections in a golden eye is set on an American army post in peace time. The protagonist Captain Penderton is a closeted homosexual. He falls in love first with his wife Leonoras lover Major Langdon and then with Private Williams who is obsessed with Leonoras nude. Finally, after witnessing the private peeping on his wife, the Captain shoots the private dead.The Prussian officer was written by David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930) who was one of the most important figures in English literature in the 20th century. The creation of his works was greatly influenced by Lawrences life experience. While accompanying his wife back to Germany, Lawrence wrote two short stories about the German Army after experiencing the kind of Grand Prussianism, one of which was The Prussian officer. The Prussian officer tells a story that a Captain abuses his orderly because of his desire to conquer and he is revenged to death by the young man. In the end, both of them die. Meanwhile, it is generally reckoned that there is an implication of homosexuality in this story.This paper will make an intertextual reading of Reflections in a golden eye and The Prussian officer. Intertextuality, originated from structuralism and post-structuralism, is one of the most popular critical terms in the contemporary era. It has been used by theorists and critics all over the world, covering many important issues in the field of literature and art. The term intertextuality was first coined in 1966 by a French critic Julia Kristeva, who got inspiration from Saussures structural linguistics and Bakhtins dialogism. Additionally, Kristeva developed intertextuality by providing precise intertextual relations, including pasting, imitation, adaptation, parody, translation, allusion and other types of transformation. Further, M. M. Bakhtins literary and linguistic theories make a great contribution to the formation of intertextuality.When it comes to intertextuality, Bazerman (2003: 86) points out that the explicit and implicit relations that a text or utterance has to prior, contemporary and potential future texts and through such relations a text evokes a representation of the discourse situation, the textual resources that bear on the situation, and how the current text positions itself and draws on other texts. Many critics and theorists enrich intertextuality according to their own understandings. Nevertheless, intertextuality can be roughly divided into two main branches: Kristevas broad sense intertextuality and Gerard Genettes narrow sense intertextuality. In Kristevas view, text research can not be limited to the text itself, and its social and historical context should be considered. In other words, texts cannot be separated from the larger social and cultural textuality. Kristeva proposed another two terms: horizontal axis and vertical axis. In the horizontal dimension, the addresser and addressee are linked tightly, that is to say, the author and the reader are interactive through the text. In the vertical dimension, the text is related to all the social and cultural texts before and after it which is placed into the large signal context. Genette put forward a new concept of intertextuality. Totally different from Kristeva, scholars advocating narrow sense intertextuality declare that intertextuality research should be reduced to text and only used to analyze specific textual relations.1.2 Literature reviewSince Carson McCullers Reflections in a golden eye was published in 1941, it has gained abundance of attention from the critical field. Studies on Reflections in a golden eye at home and abroad have been on the rise.In China, the acceptance and studies on Carson McCullers began relatively late, specifically in the 1980s. Reflections in a golden eye was first translated and introduced to Chinese readers by Chen Xiaoli in 2007. So far, the domestic studies have been mainly focused on McCullers individual works, lacking a systematic analysis of all her works. As for Reflections in a golden eye, discussions seem to be more limited. The studies are mainly carried out from several aspects. For instance, Lin (2008: 104) analyzes the Gothic imagery in Reflections in a golden eye from a postmodern perspective, trying to expose the sources of horror in McCullers grotesque construction of mirror images. Tian (2010) points out the erosion of modern civilization towards tradition based on the concepts of construction and deconstruction, suggesting that after the disappearance of the southern myths McCullers herself constructed a real South. Actually, McCullers works witness the changes of the Southern American society. In addition to this subject, Tu (2016) investigates the traumatic experience of the main characters in the novel, claiming that the trauma suffered by each one is the source of emotional alienation and spiritual isolation. Aiming to develop a different view to decode Reflections in a golden eye, Jing (2016) explores the connotation of gender politics from the perspective of cultural criticism. Foreign scholars pay more attention to McCullers than domestic researchers. There are a large number of monographs and papers on her works, which has made great contributions to the study of McCullers. The new criticism began to explore the works of McCullers abroad shortly after the publication of her first novel. With the change of the times, the research perspectives and methods are constantly enriched with the themes of spiritual isolation, queer theory, Southern Gothic and so on. At the beginning, spiritual isolation was regarded as a main clue throughout all of McCullers works. Subsequently, people begin to find the meaning of gender embodied in her works and explore the writers thinking on gender relations. Gleeson-White (2003) interprets the queer factors in McCullers novels especially by means of canvassing two characters Captain Penderton in Reflections in a golden eye and John Singer in The heart is a lonely hunter. Similarly, Johnson (2014) compares McCullers Reflections in a golden eye with Faulkners Sanctuary, declaring that McCullers adopts a process of narrative inversion rather than blindly imitating Faulkners thoughts. Both of them highlight the expression of voyeurism, deviance and normality in characters, expanding the scope of modern southern grotesque. The characters have been battling with their separation and with hiding their deviance in their normalcy. Researchers started to broaden the studies of McCullers works successively. Gilbert (2016) elucidates that every major character in Reflections in a golden eye actually is a projection of McCullers and her own desires. Graham-Bertolini (2016) contends that the atypical nature of characters Captain Penderton, Alison Langdon, and the Filipino servant Anacleto allows them to resist and challenge the injustice social order, demonstrating how performances of the normal lead these characters to tragedies. Compared with critics increasing interest in Reflections in a golden eye, The Prussian officer, a story first published in 1914, was less discussed by researchers abroad in recent years. Recent foreign studies tend to compare and analyze The Prussian officer with other novels, teasing out the connections between them. According to a Jones article which studies the themes of depravity, abuse and homosexual desire in The Prussian officer and Billy budd, Lawrences story introduces two men come into close and dangerous proximity, resulting ultimately in their deaths and reveals the secret origin of abuse (Jones, 2016: 47). The sexual tension behind the officer and the young soldier is inevitably derived from an institutional relationship. Domestic scholars pay more attention to this work itself and there are also studies of the hierarchy. For example, Guo (2011) notes that the existence of strict rank system is the root of the birth of tyrants as well as the deformed homosexuality in the army. In addition, based on Lawrences description of body, Chen (2009) demonstrates that in the inextricable conflict between body and power, hierarchy, it is human body that determines behavior and reveals the relationship and meaning of life. Wang (2010) deems the confrontation between the Prussian officer and the young soldier extremely complex, contradictory and painful, leading to the heterogeneity.1.3 Need of the studyFirstly, Carson McCullers other novels, like The heart is a lonely hunter and The member of the wedding, are widely and thoroughly discussed, while a systematic study of Reflections in a golden eye is hard to find in China. Hence, this thesis aims at narrowing the gap. Secondly, there has been neither an intertextual interpretation for Reflections in a golden eye and The Prussian officer in academic circles so far nor a comparative study of the two works. Therefore, analyzing this novel from the perspective of intertextuality will provide a new perspective to help readers make a deeper understanding of Reflections in a golden eye. ReferencesAllen, G. (2011). Intertextuality. London: Routledge.Bazerman, C. (2003). Intertextuality: How texts rely on other texts. In C. Bazerman P. Prior (Eds.), What writing does and how it does it: An introduction to analyzing texts and textual practices (pp.83-96). London: Routledge.Carr, V. S. (2005). Understanding Carson McCullers. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.Free, M. (2008). Relegation and rebellion: The queer, the grotesque, and the silent in the fiction of Carson McCullers. Studies in the novel, 40, 426-446.Gilbert, S. B. (2016). Veiling with abjection: Carson McCullers Reflections in a golden eye. The corinthian, 17, 35-50.Gleeson-White, S. (2003). Strange bodies: Gender and identity in the novels of Carson McCullers. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press.Graham-Bertolini, A. (2016). Nature is not abnormal; only lifelessness is abnormal: Paradigms of the in-valid in Reflections in a golden eye. In A. Graham-Bertolini C. Kayser (Eds.), Carson McCullers in the twenty-first century (pp.175-188). London: Palgrave Macmillan.Johnson, A. (2014). 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