dai-zhang开题报告书-英文.doc

湖 南 科 技 大 学2008 级硕士学位论文开 题 报 告 书学 位 类 型: Academic Degree拟 定 论 文 题目: “Victory Without Defeating the Other”: Charles Johnsons Middle Passage as an Allegory of Racial Politics研 究 生 姓 名: Dai Huan 学 号: 0812113学 科 专 业: English Linguistics and Literature研 究 方 向: British and American Literature 指导教师 姓 名 : Ling Jiane学 院： School of Foreign StudiesI 简况拟定论文题目“Victory Without Defeating the Other”: Charles Johnsons Middle Passage as an Allegory of Racial Politics 研究生姓名Dai Huan学 籍 号0812113入学年月September, 2008学院School of Foreign Studies专 业English Language and Literature研究方向British and American Literature导师姓名Ling Jiane职 称Vice-professor专 业English Linguistics and Literature主要研究内容An Allegory of Racial Politics: an Analysis of Charles Johnsons Middle PassageIntroduction Chapter One Eating the Other: dualist racial politics in an oppressor-oppressed situation1.1 socio-economic and philosophical roots1.2 refractions in Charles Johnsons literary world1.3 limitations and dangers Chapter Two Loving the Other: a way to genuine freedom2.1 socio-economic and philosophical conditions for Johnsons multiculturalism2.2 ideal relationship between racial groups in the imagined Republic2.3 extrication from both bodily and spiritual slaveryChapter Three Writing the Other: continuance andconsolidation of racial freedom3.1 Writing as a battlefield of various voices3.2 White racists domination over the Other through writing3.3 rewriting history and reconstructing racial relationship Chapter Four Three successive ways as a phenomenological process of racial politics4.1 Johnsons philosophical and aesthetic thoughts4.2 reflections in Middle Passage4.3 an allegory for the contemporary republicConclusionII 立论依据II-1研究意义0In the immense amount of critical opinion on Eliots The Waste Land (1921) and Four Quartets (1943), we can find constant reference to the change in his poetic tone and technique.骨灰盒科技含量 And this change was reflected in Ash-Wednesday which was published as a whole in 1930. The foreign scholars have done to some degree comprehensive study on this poem from various aspects such as the images and allusions, the rhythm and the rhyme, poets personal experience and intellectual development, the echoes of Medieval Writers and of seventeen writers, the religious liturgy and the divine love.And this change was reflected in Ash-Wednesday which was published as a whole in 1930. The foreign scholars have done to some degree comprehensive study on this poem from various aspects such as the images and allusions, the rhythm and the rhyme, poets personal experience and intellectual development, the echoes of Medieval Writers and of seventeen writers, the religious liturgy and the divine love.By comparison, the domestic study on Ash-Wednesday is not enough.0 Ash-Wednesday marks a turning point in the poets intellectual development and poetic technique. It is evident that the critics in general are aware of the personal and religious allusions that occur in Ash-Wednesday. Comprehensive surveying the study on Ash-Wednesday at home and abroad, it can be found that some deal with Lent liturgy and personal conversion, some connect Dante with Eliot, some treat the image as mystical experience. However, up till now, no one has ever analyzed the poem using the poets own theory of tradition and put this poem in the context of his own poetry writing. In this way can we understand better the role of traditional elements such as the Lent liturgy, the allusion of Dante and others, and mysticism of St. John of the Cross. All these traditional elements are the vehicle of Eliots personal emotion, intellect thought, and spiritual belief, that is, the “objective correlative” of the poet. According to Eliot, a poet must have the “historical sense”, which needs “a perception of its pastness of the past and its presence”, which makes a man write with “a feeling of the whole literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order.” No matter how his own personal voice exists in his later poems, this kind of “historical sense” works all along his poetry. Hugh Kenner, in her The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot (1959), thinks highly of Ash-Wednesday from its language, image and rhythm, and she argues that this poem is the new stage of Eliots poetry. But only the reader follows the sense of tradition which Eliot advocated and compares it with the early poems Eliot wrote, can he understand the differences of poetic feature and spiritual development in the poems. In this way the clear idea Eliots whole poetry will getII-2国内外研究现状（附中英文参考书目）Although there are in China few researches on Charles Johnson, there has been a great deal of attention on both his fiction and non-fiction works which are attracting more and more American scholars. Among his four novels, Oxherdingtale and Middle Passage, in the form of the “neo-slave narrative”, are the main attractions for scholars, with the latter more well-known and popular because of its representation of the authors more mature craftsmanship. Up till now, there have been 8 monographs on his four novels and more than 40 journal articles exclusively on Middle Passage. Since Middle Passage is generally considered as both a “black philosophical fiction” and “neo-slave narrative”, scholarship focuses mainly on its philosophical, cultural, and political implications and the authors literary innovations.1. scholarship on the philosophical and religious implications in his novelsCharles Johnson continues and deepens the exploration of the form of philosophical fiction since Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin. And he is a PhD. in philosophy himself with two philosophical works: Being and Race: Black Writing Since 1970 (1988), a phenomenological study on racial identity and politics, and Turning the Wheel: essays on Buddhism and writing(2003), in which he discusses the influence of Zen Buddhism and other Eastern thoughts on his works, he himself a black Buddhist. Therefore, the main part of the researches on his novels and short stories are concerning the philosophical and religious implications. Here are some representative researching fruits.In “Interrogating Identity: Appropriation and Transformation in Middle Passage”(1995), Daniel M. Scott III analyzes the identity formation of this novel in terms of Johnsons philosophical thought, and argues it is a “liberation of perception”.In “The African Sacrificial Kingship Ritual and Johnsons Middle Passage”(1995), Celestin Walby probes, from the perspective of the Western philosophical history, Johnsons solution to the Caliban dilemma of the black writer who has the difficult task of asserting a genuine black identity while using a language that is itself fundamentally alienating: to recommend adopting a posture of complete self-surrender, to surrender completely ones subjective experience.In Charles Johnsons Fiction (2002), William R. Nash argues that Johnsons hybrid philosophy of Buddhism and phenomenology defies the basic premises of identity formation and leads to the perception of a different self. Juxtaposed with jarring storylines of racial injustice, Johnsons notion that race is an illusion informs his aesthetic, promotes his strategies for battling oppression, and reminds readers what African Americans have already overcome in the quest to cultivate new visions of identity.In Understanding Charles Johnson(2004), Gary Storhoff explores the merging of philosophical and spiritual interests with Johnsons concern for African American culture. In identifying the literary principles of Johnsons texts, Storhoff emphasizes the writers commitment to Buddhism and demonstrates its impact on his themes, characters, narratives, and rhetoric. Suggesting that Buddhism is the linchpin of Johnsons work, Storhoff acknowledges that scholars and critics are aware of Johnsons close association with the tradition but provides readers with what they need to appreciate fully its importance in his work. Storhoff also considers Johnsons extensive study of Western philosophy, which includes a Ph.D. in the subject. Storhoff explicates the influence of the British empiricists, including Bishop George Berkeley, on the novelist; his rejection of relativism and utilitarianism; his adaptation of Aristotelian ethics; and his ambivalent treatment of American pragmatism as recently propounded by Cornel West. Johnson emerges from Storhoffs discussion as a profoundly eclectic, sophisticated, interdisciplinary writer, with complex views on race relations in the twenty-first century.In Charles Johnsons novels writing the American palimpsest(2005), Rudolph Byrd examines Johnsons four novels under the rubric of philosophical black fiction, as art that interrogates experience. Byrd contends that Johnson suspends, shelves, and brackets all presuppositions regarding African American life. This bracketing accomplished, the African American experience becomes a pure field of appearances within two poles: consciousness and the people or phenomena to which it is related.In Charles Johnson: The Novelist as Philosopher (2010), leading scholars study Johnsons works from a variety of critical perspectives, revealing the philosophical and political implications of his writings. The authors seek especially to understand philosophical black fiction and to provide the multifocal, whole sight analysis Johnsons works demands.2. researches from historical and cultural perspectivesJohnson participated in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and Black Arts Movement whose influence is easily seen on his aesthetics and literary works and whose limitations are also criticized by him. So scholars also pay attention to the historical and cultural backgroundIn “Passages from the Middle: Coloniality and Postcoloniality in Charles Johnsons Middle Passage”(1996), Brian Fagel, in relation to cultural and postcolonial theories, considereds the protagonist as a mediator between the poles: the White and Black worlds.In “Isadora at Sea: Misogyny as Comic Capital in Charles Johnsons Middle Passage”(1996), Elizabeth Muther focuses on the relationship between the male and female protagonists from the perspetive of sexual politics.In “The Paradox of Slave Mutiny in Herman Melville, Charles Johnson, and Frederick Douglass”(2003), Helen Lock researches, from the perspectives of cultural theories and literary tradition, the identity change during slave mutiny.In Charles Johnson in Context (2009), Linda Furgerson Selzer shows how these works reflect Johnsons participation in the larger cultural projects of several significant but often overlooked groups young black philosophers who challenged the dominant Anglo-American empiricist tradition during the 1960s and 1970s; black Buddhists of the post civil rights era who sought to translate an ancient religious practice into an African American idiom; and black public intellectuals who attempted to revive a cosmopolitan social ethic during the 1990s. The cultural histories of each of these groups, Selzer argues, provide important contexts for understanding Johnsons evolution as a novelist. In the academic experience of black students who entered philosophy programs during the turbulent 1960s, the spiritual concerns of black Buddhists who have only recently begun to speak more publicly about their faith, and the cultural issues surrounding the emergence of a new cohort of African American public intellectuals, we see the roots of the social, moral, and aesthetic vision that informs what some have described as Johnsons philosophical fiction.3. researches on the authors literary innovationsAs a highly innovative author, Johnson has been seeking formal and thematic alternations to meet the ever-changing economic and political situations, in order to avoid having his works stereotyped as highly flavored with naturalism and himself as a “protest writer”, and to realize the “liberation of perception”. He draws from techniques of modernism and postmodernism, while retaining elements like black folklore and ancient tribal beliefs, which are typical of Afro-American literature. To a degree, this embodies his multiculturalism of co-existence and harmony without the erasure of one by the other. Scholars have noticed his literary techniques in terms of literary, especially black literary, tradition. In Postmodern Counternarratives: Irony and Audience in the Novelsof Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, Charles Johnson, and Tim OBrien (2005),Christopher Donovan provides a wide-ranging discussion of realism,postmodernism, literary theory and popular fiction before focusing onthe careers of four prominent novelists. Despite wildly contrastingambitions and agendas, all four grow progressively more sympatheticto the expectations of a mainstream literary audience, noting theincreasingly neglected yet archetypal need for strong explanatorynarrative even while remaining wary of its limitations, presumptions,and potential abuses. Exploring novels that manage to bridge the gapbetween accessible storytelling and literary theory, this book showshow contemporary authors reconcile values of postmodern literaryexperimentation and traditional realism.In Postmodern Tales of Slavery in the Americas: From AlejoCarpentier to Charles Johnson(2000), Timothy J. Cox analyzes thepostmodern aesthetics common to these tales of slavery and praisesthe technical innovations of Johnsons Middle Passage.In Neo-slave Narratives: Studies in the Social Logic of a Literary Form(1999), Ashraf H. A. Rushdy tells how the neo-slave narrative mightbe considered in relation to other literary forms of the 1970s and1980s and sees Johnsons Middle Passage as a revision of the form ofthe neo-slave narrative.In “Beloved and Middle Passage: Race, Narrative, and the Critics Essentialism(1994)”, Molly Abel Travis probes Johnsons and bold innovations in narrative strategy and characterization in relation to reader-response theories and his aesthetic and phenomenological thoughts.In “Charles Johnsons Middle Passage as Historiographic Metafiction” (1997), Barbara Z. Thaden argues that Middle Passage is “an accessible and important example of what Linda Hutcheon calls historiographic metafiction”, while Johnson still holds the realistic twin goals: an object of love and work as a sphere of achievement.In “Sorcery, Double-Consciousness, and Warring Souls: An Intertextual Reading of Middle Passage”(1996), Whatley Smith traces Johnsons literary journey from imatation of the predecessors like Ralph Ellison to his own unique style.In the end, I will introduce the two researches of Middle Passage and Charles Johnson by domestic scholars. In The Collection of Critical Essays on American National Book Award Winners(2001), Liu Jie contributes Charles Johnsons Middle Passage, which analyzes the main characters of the novel and points out that it is the authors philosophical meditaions on the relationship between enslaver and enslaved. The other research is in Jiang Ningkangs Literature & National Identity in Contemporary America(2008), in which he argues, in relation to black identification, that the insight of Charles Johnson lies in the fact that the protagonists cultural identification transcends pure ethnicity and reaches the height of universal humanism. However, the two researches are far from enough to match Johnsons literary achievement and popularity abroad, the former shallow and the latter brief. Therefore, there remains a great deal for domestic scholars to explore. Works Cited：Brockmeier, Jens and Donal Carbaugh. Narrative and Identity: Studies in Autobiography, Self and Culture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2001.Byerman, Keith Eldon. Remembering the past in contemporary African merican ction . Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005.Byrd, Rudolph P. Charles Johnsons novels writing the American palimpsest. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2005.Byrd, Rudolph P.,ed. I Call Myself an Artist: Writings by and about Charles Johnson. Bloomington & Indianapolis, 1999.Cheng, Anne Anlin. The melancholy of race. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.Cherniavsky, Eva. Race, Nation, and the Body Politics of Capital. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.Coleman, James W. Black male fiction and the legacy of Caliban. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2001.Conner, Marc C. To Utter the Holy: The Metaphysical Romance of Middle Passage”.Conner, Marc C. and William R. Nash,ed. Charles Johnson: The Novelist as Philosopher. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2007.Donovan, Christopher. Postmodern Counternarratives: Irony and Audience in the Novels of Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, Charles Johnson, and Tim OBrien. New York & London: Routledge, 2005.Fagel, Brian. “Passages from the Middle: Coloniality and Postcoloniality in Charles Johnsons Middle Passage”. African American Review, Vol. 30, No. 4, Charles Johnson Issue (Winter, 1996), 625-34.Fisch, Audrey A. ed. The Cambridge Companion to the African American Slave Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007 .Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Black Literature and Literary Theory. New York: Methuen, Inc., 1984.hooks, bell. Eating the Other. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992. 21-40.hooks, bell. We real cool: Black men and masculinity. New York: Rou