（英语语言文学专业论文）《喜福会》和《灶神之妻》中的“福”码解密.pdf

华中科技大学硕士学位论文 iii 摘摘 要要 谭恩美是美国华裔作家的代表人物之一, 在华裔文学甚至美国文学界都具有一 定的地位。她的两部作品喜福会和灶神之妻蕴涵着丰富的中国传统文化， 但以往的评论界侧重于语言学、女性主义的角度对中美文化差异进行了探讨，指出 美籍华裔女性在个人身份困境中的疑惑和挣扎。本文作者认为这两部作品中所体现 中国传统文化元素福气情结是谭恩美的艺术创作以及众多华裔女性找到身份归属的 关键。 本文作者在借鉴前人的分析基础之上，选取谭恩美最具代表性，最成功的两部 小说， 从文化中一个细微的角度出发, 探讨其中所蕴涵的一个传统的中国元素福气情 结（the luck complex）, 挖掘其在反映作品主题，情节发展以及叙事方面的作用。 同时，谭恩美本人以及文中人物所体现的这种福气情结都根源于中华民族的福气思 想，它对移居异乡的华裔的命运与人生起到激励和支撑作用,也是民族融合的关键。 但这种极具研究价值的思想却没有得到讨论与研究，这就是本文作者的创作主旨。 luck在中国或华裔身上更多的表现出对好运气的渴望,故其虽有福气和坏运之分,在 文中作者主要选取福气作为探讨主题。 文中主要运用两种研究方法及理论。首先，作者指出谭恩美小说中所蕴涵的道 家思想，运用道家的宿命论和对立平衡理论，如阴阳，五行及风水等来阐释女性生 活中的福祸转变和命运的变化莫测。这种中国道家思想蕴涵的福气思想对谭恩美的 创作有着巨大影响，也是美籍华裔在远离中国异地的美国生存的支柱。其次，由于 谭恩美的小说较多涉及到女性的遭遇(好运或坏运),本文也引入了女性主义批评理 论。 作者运用道家思想和女性主义这两种批评方法，在正文中具体分析了福气的概 念以及在文中具体的运用：对故事情节的推动以及对叙事结构起到的主线作用。具 体表现为：首先探讨了运气或福气的定义与来源，以及与原型（美国梦）的关系； 其次分析了小说中移民美国之前的母亲们在旧中国其所持有并坚信的福气情结，这 华中科技大学硕士学位论文 iv 种情结对她们生活和人生所产生的影响；接着分析了移民后美国母亲们在面临异域 的福祸遭遇时，这种福气情结对她们人生抉择的影响；再次，探讨这种福气情结并 没有被美国文化熏陶下的女儿们理解并接受，代表两种文化的母女们发生冲突。而 实际上女儿和母亲一样，面临着性别和种族问题，找不到自己的身份。最终女儿们 理解了母亲们所持有的福气情结，母女关系得到和解，并在道家这种思想的支撑下， 找到自己的身份，得到福气。福气除了在推动故事情节方面有着重要作用之外，它 在小说的叙事结构中起到主线的作用。作者也探讨了福气在小说艺术创作中，在前 景和背景叙事中所起到提纲契领的作用。 结合谭恩美在与命运抗争的思想，作者揭开了福气的真正含义，指出福气 就是变幻莫测的命运。面对福祸的转变，需要渴望好运的到来，并积极努力去抓住 好运。这种福气情结已成为她们在不能控制的命运中的精神支柱和民族特征，促使 华裔女性找到了自己的身份。 同时, 福气情结作为荣格集体无意识理论的一个原型是 世界各国人们相通的基石, 成为五彩斑斓美国梦中具有中国传统文化特色的一个重 要组成部分。 关键词关键词：谭恩美 福气 道家思想 喜福会 灶神之妻 华中科技大学硕士学位论文 i abstract amy tans masterpieces, the joy luck club and the kitchen gods wife are very popular among critics and readers. the two novels are full of abundant traditional chinese culture, but critics mainly interpret them from the perspective of linguistics, feminism and culture studies to discuss the culture clashes and the search for identity. the author suggests that the luck complex embodied in traditional chinese culture is the key to tans artistic creation and the basis to find identity for chinese american women. on the basis of analysis of previous studies, the author chooses the most representative and successful novels (the joy luck club and the kitchen gods wife) and analyzes them from a tiny perspective-the luck complex, one traditional element in tans novels. the author finds its real significance in theme, developing plots and narration. the luck complex, expressed by amy tan and the characters in her novels, is deeply rooted in traditional chinese culture. it becomes the backbone and the key to cultural acculturation for chinese american women. whereas, this valuable thought is never thoroughly discussed by the critics. this is the reason why the author composes the thesis. the luck complex which showed in chinese american women is the hope or desire for good luck. therefore, the author chooses good luck to be the research subject, although it can be classified into good luck and bad luck. in the thesis, two critical approaches are introduced. first it is taoism, which is fully implied in tans novels. the author analyzes the uncontrollable fate and the luck complex of american chinese women by the theories of fatalism and binary opposition, i.e.yin-yang, the five elements, fengshui, etc. secondly, feminism is also introduced because tans novels mainly discuss the fate of women, no matter bad luck or good luck. then, the author analyzes the luck complex and the use of it in the body: both in developing plots and narrating. in details are: the term of luck decoding and its archetype. 华中科技大学硕士学位论文 ii how the luck complex worked on the mothers in old china and its influence on their life; how the luck complex worked on the mothers after they immigrated to america and its impact on their choices; but the luck complex has not been accepted by their daughters who totally accepted american values and cultural clashes occurred. actually the mothers and daughters both faced the crisis of identity, gender and ethic. it is the luck complex makes them reconcile and promote cultural acculturation. not only its role in developing plots, the luck complex also plays a role in narration. the author also discusses the luck complex by referring to the thought expressed in “the opposite of fate”. finally, the author concludes that luck is the uncontrollable fate. the luck complex has been one part of chinese american womens worldview, and plays a significant role in their life. the luck complex is the characteristics of their ethics. on the basis of it, they can find their chinese american identity. meanwhile, the luck complex as one archetype has been one part of colorful american dream, but still characterized the traditional chinese culture. key words: amy tan the joy luck club the kitchen gods wife luck taoism 独创性声明独创性声明 本人声明所呈交的学位论文是我个人在导师指导下进行的研究工作及取得的研 究成果。尽我所知，除文中已经标明引用的内容外，本论文不包含任何其他个人或 集体已经发表或撰写过的研究成果。对本文的研究做出贡献的个人和集体，均已在 文中以明确方式标明。本人完全意识到，本声明的法律结果由本人承担。 学位论文作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 学位论文版权使用授权书学位论文版权使用授权书 本学位论文作者完全了解学校有关保留、使用学位论文的规定，即：学校有权 保留并向国家有关部门或机构送交论文的复印件和电子版，允许论文被查阅和借阅。 本人授权华中科技大学可以将本学位论文的全部或部分内容编入有关数据库进行检 索，可以采用影印、缩印或扫描等复制手段保存和汇编本学位论文。 保密 ，在_年解密后适用本授权书。 不保密。 （请在以上方框内打“”） 学位论文作者签名： 指导教师签名： 日期： 年 月 日 日期： 年 月 日 本论文属于 华中科技大学硕士学位论文 1 introduction in the chinese american literature, amy tan is one of the famous writers who has written seven books during her career. among them are the joy luck club，the kitchen gods wife, the hundred secret senses, the bonesetters daughter, etc. the first two novels are most welcomed by readers. the joy luck club won commonwealth club gold award for fiction, bay area book reviewers award for best fiction, and nomination for los angeles times book award, all in1989. the kitchen gods wife was a 1991 booklist editors choice, and won best american essays award in 1991. the two novels are of important value in the study of chinese american literature. as the first successful works, the joy luck club has been hotly discussed by critics at home ever since its publication. these articles analyze this novel from different angles. at home, some critics held by he liqun discuss the traditional chinese culture in the novel, and regard taoism and confucianism as the key to its success. fengshui, the five elements and yin-yang are pointed out to be the successful factors, which play an important role in creating vivid characters, developing conflicts and filling the novel with exotic flavor; some critics interpret it by means of feminism and analyze the gender discrimination the chinese american women suffered (liu yu 92-4; li suping 10-2); some critics emphasize the difference of cultures by means of linguistics and narration, which focus on the form of tans novels. by using marked theory from linguistics aspect, critics study the culture conflicts between the two generations (he muying 316-19). narration is another focus. amy tan adopts the communicative and individual voice, as well as family monologue (talk-story, the memory of the mothers) as the narrative mode (tan 94-9); she uses the form of mah jong as the narrative structure besides the importance of theme in her novel (zhang ruihua 99) by breaking the order of time and space; the perspective of women and first person are adopted to narrate the story (jia 93-6).some 华中科技大学硕士学位论文 2 critics analyze the motif and culture conflicts by introducing postcolonialism (zhao lihua 42-4) and edward halls high and low background culture theory (guan 67-9) etc, focusing on the subject of mother-daughter relationship, to explore the conflicts of the eastern and western cultures. american dream is another topic as far as tans novels are concerned. the critics suggest that the mothers suffered the breaking of american dream because the different cultural traditions, philosophy of existence and the difficult situation in mainstream america (yuan 82). one more topic to be attractive to critics is the identity of chinese american women in the novel. the identity can be classified into two categories: gender and race. critics suggest that the mothers and daughters have the crisis of identity both in old china and america because of culture clashes. when the cultures compromise each other, these chinese american women can form their unique chinese american identity, a kind of hybridity. (peng 74-76; hu 73-76. etc.) her second masterpiece, the kitchen gods wife, is overshadowed by the first one, and only 6 periodical articles can be found. two of them discuss its successful factors from the cultural perspective by introducing orientalism and the stereotype of hero redemption. (zhan 83-9) four of them focus on feminism in two aspects: one is the analysis of narrative angles (the discourse right and the first person etc.) and the mode of narration, which breaks the sequence, space and time. another aspect is the analysis of the images of mothers by analyzing the story of women. (zhu 40-3). abroad, critics also analyze the novels from different perspectives. hamilton analyzes the factors of traditional chinese culture and pointed out that it is the belief system (yinyang, the five elements and fengshui) that makes them find their identity, and has been one of their ethical characteristics. xu ben introduced the theory of memory to discuss the mother-daughter relationship and traditional chinese culture as the survival mentality. zonobia mistri emphasizes the relationship between jingmei and suyuan to discuss cultural clashes and identity. catherine romagnolo uses the metaphor of sexism color to discuss the narrations and writing. mariela hristova introduces the theory of julia 华中科技大学硕士学位论文 3 kriseva, that is, the role of the speaker in operating consciousness to discuss the cultural factor and identity. in addition to that, feminism approach is also adopted. although great achievements have been made in interpreting tans fictions, there are still some limitations. at home, the previous study of the joy luck club on traditional chinese culture do not provide the implied meaning behind taoism and the reason why amy tan uses chinese elements; in the previous study of the kitchen gods wife, amy tan doesnt show strong consciousness of gender only because of winnies or her fatalism? in which way the mothers and daughters understand each other and how culture conflicts are solved? the narration, the broken time and sequence is brought forward but the reason why amy tan adopts is never discussed. abroad, critics fail to point out the common nature of taoism or survival mentality from a macro-scale point of view. in narration, critics also fail to find the meaning behind it. the author wants to discuss more deeply. critics fail to combine feminism approach and chinese culture together to analyze the stories in her two novels, and discover the common nature behind the different theories (yin-yang, the five elements and fengshui etc). the common nature is the luck complex embodied in taoism, and becomes the successful factor in the two novels. it frequently appears in tans novels, and expresses chinese american women strong desire for luck and happiness in the future life. the luck complex finds resonance to another key subject in american literature, that is, american dream. it is the key to success in tans novels, but is never touched by critics. that is the reason why the author writes this article to deepen into the core of her novels. amy tan lives in postmodern period and during this period, the literature and philosophies try to find a cure to the uncontrollable life, and try to find individuals identity and status. all are based on the belief and the luck complex. the thesis aims to give an interpretation of luck, which occurs in her novels frequently in way of taoism and feminism. the handling of attitude towards life in taoism will be explained in details, such as the status change between lucky and unlucky in life or the change between the weak and the strong. the luck complex in taoism has a strong 华中科技大学硕士学位论文 4 influence on her novels and luck becomes the main clue of her novels. it is used to develop the conflicts in the stories and is the cause of the events and the driving force of the plots. all the people in the novels had the good luck and ill luck in life. the mothers had strong belief in luck while the daughters did not understand the meaning of luck. they quarreled with each other until the daughters finally understood the meaning of luck in their mothers mind. the luck complex encourages people to face against the misfortune in their life in narrow sense, and it also encourages chinese americans to survive between the two different cultures (american culture and traditional chinese culture) in broad sense. except the role of luck in promoting the development of plots, it also acts as the device of narration, no matter in foreground or background. but critics never analyze tans novels from the perspective of luck. in addition to the influence of taoism, the luck complex can also be traced back to amy tans bad and tragic experiences. it formed her view of life in her writing careers. in sept.2004, amy tan published one non-fiction prose collection, the opposite of fate. in it, she said she took her life experience as the materials. her brother and father died when she was young, and she was arrested by the police because of lack of judgments. the luck and misfortunes are the creating sources of her novels, because she realized the most touching story came from the most miserable life. the reason why she created these stories is that she felt the life is questionable and mysterious. she claimed that, what i lack in terms of sense of style, i more than make up for by giving myself a sense of luck,” “she intermittently refers to the books title to explore her unfolding understanding of how a persons attitude determines how luck, fate and faith interact. (qtd.in sander. 49) the author finds that amy tan has strong luck complex, which is fully expressed in her novels. the luck complex dominates her writing, reflecting the use of luck in developing 华中科技大学硕士学位论文 5 the plot and narrations. therefore, the author hopes the luck complex will advance the study of amy tans novels. for analysis of the luck complex in the novels, two ideological theories will be adopted. one is taoism. the luck complex is fully expressed in taoism, in which fengshui, yin-yang, the five elements and astrology are included. another is feminism. tans novels mainly describe the fate of women. luck for women is closely related to their marriage and social status. therefore, feminism is also another useful tool except taoism to analyze the luck in her novels. the approaches of feminism and taoism are applied to help demonstrate the theme of this thesis. taoism proposed by lao tzu can be divided into three categories: the thought of nature, of life and of politics. only life view is fully applied to tans novels. the life view holds that life is uncontrollable, and people should face the misfortune with optimistic attitude. in chapter 58 of tao te ching, it writes that, it is upon bad fortune that good fortune leans, upon good fortune that bad fortune rests. but though few know it, there is a bourn where there is neither right or wrong.(122) the status of lucky and unlucky is inseparable and their change is unpredictable. in chapter 76, it writes, when he is born, man is soft and weak; in death he becomes stiff and hard. the ten thousand creatures and all plants and trees while they are alive are supple and soft, but when they are dead they become brittle and dry.(160) 华中科技大学硕士学位论文 6 the change between the status of lucky and unlucky, weak and strong is possible, but it needs some conditions, that is, the hard working and the desire for luck. the thought of luck, the law of opposition and unification or the dialectic thought have great influence on the choice of subjects of tans novels. the opposition and acculation of men and women, east and west is reflected in tans novels. the conflicts are realized by the luck complex. except taoism, feminism is another approach. virginia woolf and simone de beauvoir are the key theoreticians in the movement. virginia woolf confessed in the room of ones own that she had to kill the “angel in the house”, she had to kill her in self-defense and in order to save the author within her, or else the “angel” would have killed her and “plucked the heart out for her writing” (237-8). she began to realize the impartial social system and wanted the freedom and the rights of women against injustice. simone de beauvoir wrote in the second sex, “one is not born, but becomes a woman”(267). she further concluded that: “woman is determined not by her hormones or by mysterious instincts, but by the manner in which her body and her relation to the world are modified through the action of others than herself” (734).the tragedies of women were fully expanded in the joy luck club and the kitchen gods wife. the stories of mothers in their marriages disclosed the feminine discrimination in the male-centered society of old china. the luck complex functioned as a placebo when these women suffered from the authority of man. in summary, taoism and feminism are both introduced to explain the luck complex in tans two novels. but, the author would like to discuss the term-luck in chapter one first. then, the two approaches will be applied to analyze the details in the novels. 华中科技大学硕士学位论文 7 chapter i decoding of luck 1.1 lexicographic definition of luck luck, according to oxford dictionary, means something with gambling. there are many explanations about the word “luck”. according to merriam-webster collegiate dictionary, luck is, “good fortune to prosper or succeed through chances or good fortunea purposeless, unpre