献给艾米丽的玫瑰本科毕业论文.doc

分类号 密级 U D C 编号 本科毕业论文（设计）题目献给艾米丽的玫瑰的情境设置分析 院 （系） 专 业 年 级 学生姓名 学 号 指导教师 二O一O年十月1The Circumstances as Symbols in “A Rose for Emily”In partial fulfillment of the requirements for BA degree In English LiteratureSupervisor: Academic Title: Associate Professor Signature: October 2010ContentsAbstract in Chinese iAbstract in English .ii1. Introduction.1.1 A brief introduction to the author and “A Rose for Emily”.1.2 Literature review.1.3 Thesis statement and layout of this paper.2. Symbolic Meaning of the Circumstances in the Story.2.1 Emilys house.2.2 The town of Jefferson.2.3 North and South.3. Symbolic Meanings of the Rose in the Story.3.1 Designative and symbolic meanings.3.2 Symbolic meanings of rose in western literatures.3.3 Specific symbolic meanings of the rose in the story. 3.3.1 Rose as the representative of love and believes. 3.3.2 Rose as the representative of tragedy. 3.3.3 Rose as the representative of the pursuit of sex.4. Conclusion.Bibliography.1123334677811111112131414内容摘要福克纳于1949年获得诺贝尔文学奖。他的绝大多数作品都以美国南方为背景，小说讲述了南方 300来年的历史。而献给爱米丽的一朵玫瑰花整是他的短篇中最有名、最受欢迎和最多次收入短篇小说集的作品，因而这篇文章在美国小说中具有典型代表。在就要灭亡的南部种植园奴隶制与蓬勃发展的北方工业文明发生激烈碰撞的年代里，没落的南方贵族小姐艾米丽垂死挣扎，为挽住大势已去的南部文明与锐不可挡的北方工业文明作殊死抗争，并由此上演了一幕文明已逝的悲剧。虽然这篇小说题名为“献给爱米丽的一朵玫瑰花”，但在小说中，只在结尾提到玫瑰花，也没有人献花给爱米丽。这谜一样的篇名似乎暗藏着福克纳的深意。这是种自我颠覆的方式，或者说也是一种自我首肯的方式，福克纳故意留此悬念引发人们去深思其背后的真正动机。本文将通过分析小说中文化、情景以及人物关系来分析玫瑰的隐含意义。身为贵族的艾米丽作为南方文化的化身和代表北方工业的荷莫在杰弗森小镇里擦出爱的火花，但这看似美好的融合却最后带来了悲剧的结局。因此解读“玫瑰”的寓意是理解全文的关键。具体来说，本文将从小说情景的设置入手研究，进一步分析玫瑰在本文乃至整个西方文化中的隐含意义，以期能够更加深入的了解美国内战之后南北文化融合的矛盾以及当时社会，特别是男权主义对刚刚开始解放的女性思想的禁锢。关键词：威廉福克纳; 爱美丽; 玫瑰; 美国内战; 隐含意义; 社会矛盾 iAbstractFaulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949. Most of his works are in the background of the Southern United States. His novels tell the history of the South for nearly 300 years. “A Rose for Emily” is the most famous novel of Faulkner. And it is also the most popular and the most times which has been quoted in his collections of short stories. For all these reasons, this article is the most typical American novel.During the years which the southern plantation slavery will perish and the northern industrial civilization is booming, the fierce collision occurs. The declining Southern aristocracy, Miss Emily, puts up her deathbed struggle. She fights with the northern industrial civilization in order to keep the southern tradition which is deteriorating. This staged a tragedy about dead civilizations. This novel entitled “A Rose for Emily”; however, the author only mentioned roses at the end of the story and nobody gave roses to Emily. Why Faulkner chose this title seemed to be enigmatic. This is a way of self-subversion or a mode of self-sanctionwhich Faulkner intentionally left this suspense to let people to have a deep ponder of the real motives. Because the rose has designative and symbolic meanings, it deserves a special analysis.My paper will analyze the culture, scenarios and characters in the novel and then analyze the relationship between the characters and the implications of the rose. The aristocracy, Emily, who is the representative of southern culture, falls in love with Homer who is the embodiment of North civilizations in the Jefferson. However, the seeming good beginning is finally a tragedy. Therefore interpretation the implication of the “Rose” is the key to understanding the whole novel. Specifically, my essay will start with the analyzing of the setting of the circumstances of the novel. At the next step, I will analyze the roses implications in the story, then to the whole western culture. That will help us understand the culture confliction between the North and South and the spiritual confined to women throughout the society.Key words: William Faulkner; Emily; rose; American civil war; symbolic meanings; Social conflictionii1. IntroductionPublished in 1930, “A Rose for Emily” was one of the best known and the most widely read novel among William Faulkners short stories. The story took place in a mythical town that William Faulkner called Jefferson, Mississippi. The story happened at the period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when the town was learning to live with Souths loss in the civil War and the consequent dismantling of the slavery-based society that had preceded it. Because of the loss in the Civil War, people in the south led a poor life. Especially the white people, their life suddenly become poor because most of the slaves went to the north to work for the northern industry, so the white people couldnt get accustomed to the life change in a short time, but they still pretended to be noble and kept their familys dignity.1.1 A brief introduction to the author and “A Rose for Emily”Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897, but soon thereafter his family moved to Oxford, Mississippi, a site he would rename Jefferson in his fiction and would use as the setting for almost all of his novels and short stories.Faulkner came from an old, proud, and distinguished Mississippi family, which included a governor, a colonel in the Confederate Army, and notable business pioneers. During the Civil War, his fiery temper caused him to be demoted from colonel to lieutenant colonel.Although Faulkner is heavily identified with Mississippi, he was living in New Orleans in 1925 when he wrote his first novel,Soldiers Pay, after being influenced by Sherwood Anderson to try fiction. The small house at 624 Pirates Alley, just around the corner from St. Louis Cathedral, is now the premises of Faulkner House Books, and also serves as the headquarters of thePirates Alley Faulkner Society. What does not appear in Faulkners fiction is that during all of his great-grandfathers projects and designs, the colonel took time to write one of the nations bestsellers, The White Rose of Memphis, which was published in book form in 1881. He also wrote two other novels, but only The White Rose of Memphis was successful. (Edmond, 1981: 35)Faulkner married Estelle Oldham in June 1929 at College Hill Presbyterian Church just outside of Oxford, Mississippi. They honeymooned on the Mississippi Gulf Coast at Pascagoula, then returned to Oxford, first living with relatives while they searched for a home of their own to purchase. In 1930 Faulkner purchased the antebellum home Rowan Oak, known at that time as “The Bailey Place”. In 1957, Faulkner accepted a position as writer-in-residence at the University of Virginia. (Edmond, 1981: 145) There, in informal class settings, he answered many questions about his novels and his artistic vision. Although he sometimes confused aspects of one novel with another, his answers attest to his characters vibrant personalities and expand on his panoramic vision for the Yoknapatawpha saga.In June 1962, Faulkner was thrown from his horse and injured his back. He suffered intense pain and was admitted to Wrights Sanitarium, in Byhalia, Mississippi, on July 5. The next dayironically the date of the old Colonels birthdayhe died, leaving behind him a body of work unsurpassed in twentieth-century literature. (Edmond, 1981: 82)Faulkner uses new techniques to express mans position in the modern world. The complexity of his narrative structures mirrors the complex lives we lead. Most of his novels and short stories probe into the mores and morals of the South, which he was not hesitant to criticize. In his early fiction, Faulkner views despairingly mans position in the universe. He briefly voices this same sense of futility and defeat in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: “Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up?” Man is a weak creature incapable of rising above his selfish needs.The story described a white woman, Emilys tragic life under the Souths loss after the Civil War. Emilys life was strongly dominated by her father, and she had no right to date with males and choose her lover. After her fathers death, she could only date with a northern worker. But to her disappointment, the worker refused to marry her, and the refusal drove her to kill him by using poison, and she let his body company her. After Emilys death, the town people discovered a skeleton in the house, and found out that the poor Emily was a murder, and people were shocked by the discovery.1.2 Literature reviewThe story described a white woman, Emilys tragic life under the Souths loss in the Civil War. Emilys life was strongly dominated by her father, and she had no right to date with males and choose her lover. After her fathers death, she could only date with a northern worker. But to her disappointment, the worker refused to marry her, and the refusal drove her to kill him by using poison, and she let his body company her. After Emilys death, the town people discovered a skeleton in the house, and found out that the poor Emily was a murder, and people were shocked by the discovery.This novel is divided into five parts, and the author uses his memory to describe the mysterious life of Emily Grierson who struggles about the decline of the old days in the south and tries to escape from the reality. In the story, this woman is in mental disorder and the confliction between the north and the south is very sharp.The background of this short story is the U.S. Southern culture at that time. The Southerner adores the “chivalry” and is famous for the “Southern Belle”. In fact, the essence of the Southern Belle is the aftereffect of the Puritans thought which requires that women abide by the law and behave themselves. In the south, tradition, morals, norms, order and a lot of other things have to obey the male-centered principle (Wan, 1981: 228).Faulkner chooses the town of Jefferson as the background, describes Emilys life in the first person points of view which greatly enhance the work of the objectivity, credibility and sense of hierarchy, and will leave readers with sufficient space for imagination. “We” represents all the people in Jefferson town except Emily. This arrangement shows the Emily and the towns are just like a square peg in round hole, and by this way of narrative, we can see that Emily is an isolated, temperament strange person.1.3 Thesis statement and layout of this paperIn the first part of my paper, I will study the designative and symbolic meaning of the rose in literary works, particularly the significance in the Western literary works. Then I will try to analyze why the author set other things in “A Rose for Emily” and these things Implication. In the end, I will focus on analyzing the rose in this novel. I will try to interpret the symbolism of the story.2. Symbolic Meaning of the Circumstances in the Story2.1 Emilys houseEmilys house is a feudal fortress. She isolates herself in that little place. Although there is no farm, this fortress embodies the characteristics of Southern plantations. In her family the feudal system is kept intact. There is a strict hierarchy between father and daughter, so as to the whites and blacks. In this “plantation”, the father takes charge of nearly everything and is regarded as the hereditary rule of the glory. Emily is the hostess of this house and she can control over all of the slaves in her home. But her life but was enveloped in the stifling atmosphere. Tobe, the black slave, seems to be the only people who have life in the house. “It was a big, squares frame house that had once been white,” is the only property that her father left. “Lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores” Interior is “a dim hall,” “still more shadow”, “a close, dank smell”, “opened the blinds of one window”, “a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs”, “It smells of dust and disuse”. The only one who accompanies her is a black slave who often carries a shopping basket. Around the house is a new industry area, “garages and cotton gins”. The living circumstance of Emily is in the cultural confliction of old and new which isolates her and let her behavior be more grotesque. The living environment determines the peoples consciousness. Emilys living environment is so dark and dreary and she has been influenced by the environment.Emilys father is the guy with the gigantic horsewhip. Hes only referred to as “Emilys father”. Faulkner himself didnt approve of the man at all. In an interview, Faulkner expounds on this character:In this case there was the young girl with a young girls normal aspirations to find love and then a husband and a family, who was brow-beaten and kept down by her father, a selfish man who didnt want her to leave home because he wanted a housekeeper, and it was a natural instinct of repressed which you cant repress it you can mash it down but it comes up somewhere else and very likely in a tragic form, and that was simply another manifestation of mans injustice to man, of the poor tragic human being struggling with its own heart, with others, with its environment, for the simple things which all human beings want. In that case it was a young girl that just wanted to be loved and to love and to have a husband and a family.(quoted in Faulkner, 1950: 62)That description is pretty straightforward. The story is meant to show a very selfish man in a very selfish society.2.2 The town of JeffersonDuring a long period, the Town of Jefferson is in charged by aristocracy who are the supporters of feudal kingdom which has the inherent hereditary tradition and specific culture, values and norms. It is because the invasion of the north that threatened the tradition. The modern machines replace the lifestyle in plantation. There is a big collision between the new system and the traditional lifestyle. Free postal service also indicates the difference between two cultures. The influences of the north are nearly everywhere from the political to the economic and culture. However, the old forces in north are not easily intimidated. Someone such as Emily bravely resists the invasion of north.Environment on the town is full of vitality which has the sharp contrast to the tomb-like old house. With the end of slavery, the plantation which charged by the aristocracy, rapidly declined. The small town is pursuing modern civilization. The change is everywhere in the town except Emilys house which silently resists the change. The contrast between Emilys house and the town indicate the end of the house although the old house stands there as a strong defender of slavery. This picture depicts the irreconcilable contradictions between the emerging industrial social class and the south feudal class.In the eyes of citizens, Emilys status is prominent and noble. She is both the memorial of the glorious history of the south and the incarnation of the old southern governing class. For all of these reasons, the town people are trying their best to support her and let the house to be set apart. Therefore, we can not say the support of the people is from the sense of “love”, it is merely as a tradition keep. They think it is their duty. From the text we can see that the citizens show their sympathy, concern and understanding to Emily throughout the novel. 。When her father died, “in a way, people were glad.”, “At last they could pity Miss Emily.” they believe that the lonely and poor life of Emily will make her be “become humanized”, the women also prepared to call at the house, “and offer condolence and aid.” To the bizarre behavior that Emily stubbornly left the body of her father, as the neighbors “We did not say she was crazy then.”, “We believed she had to do that.” When Homer who is a people from the north come into Emilys life, they worried, and saying “poor Emily,” because Homer Barron is just like the rat which is a kind of plague that intrude Emily and even the whole south.As a Southern aristocrat, Emily is willing to marry the lower-class Yankees. This action is considered to be the “disgrace to the town and a bad example to the young people”. They are filled with hope that Emily will change her mind and abandon this “deviant marriage”. In fact, people in the town may have been speculated the whole story before the Emily passed away. However, in order to maintain her as the noble and aristocratic dignity, they dont treat Emily as a murderer. They do not investigate although the house distributes stench. Judge Stevens even says “Id be the last one in the world to bother Miss Emily”. “They broke open the cellar door and sprinkled lime there, and in all the outbuildings”. No one questions the sudden disappearance of Homer. The town people present her flowers when they attend Emilys funeral, and most of the older generation wear uniforms to show their respect. These revolutionary predecessors have treated Emily as their comrades. In their eyes, the marriage of Homer is not a combination of love, but the carry on of the civil war which is just ends. Emily wins the conflict to the north which