Indulgence And Surpassing

This thesis aims to analyze and interpret the desire discourse in current Chinese literature. By following the chronological and the horizontal order, the Western theory of modernism and desire theory are applied to explore the causes of desire discourse, namely the social cultural context, theoretical source, discourse style, value orientation, aesthetic pursuits, etc. It is hoped that this panoramic view of desire discourse, particularly since 1990s, will help the readers get a comprehensive understanding of it. In spite of the domination of materialism in our era, monograph on the desire discourse is still not available. For this reason, the author chooses desire discourse as the research topic and, with the theoretical interpretation and intensive reading of the texts as the research methods, reviews the developmental process of the desire discourse. The author aspires to shed new light on the literary development in the new millennium, and to offer insight for those who are trapped by their desire.The thesis is consisted of five chapters. It argues that the desire discourse originated from the modern cultural context, and was strongly influenced by western trend of thought in literature and art, particularly the desire theory and the feminism. Chapter I is a definition of desire and an introduction to the western desire theory and its philosophical and cultural value and meaning. Then, the desire discourse in the 1970s and mid-1980s is analyzed on the basic of combing the desire discourse narration after the Five-fourth Movement where the desire discourse was disguised for political considerations. Starting from the discovery of nature and ode to nature, desire discourse began to take shape. Then it grew from the identification with the primitive instinct of life to the identification with people's desire for food and for sex. The narration was subtle, reserved and aesthetic. Chapter II is a horizontal comparative study of the neo-realistic novels seasoned with desire and Su Tong's historical novels centered round desire. Here, a close examination of The Abandoned City, a rather controversial novel, shows that under the disguise of desire discourse, this novel depicts the living, depression and confusion of the Chinese intellectuals in the transitional period in their perspective with a kind of fragmentary beauty. However, such open description of the sex was beyond the psychological bottom line of his readers. In Chapter III, with the ontological desire theory as the point of entry, the author turns to a thorough investigation of the ontological narration of desire andestablishes that it has post-modernism as its theoretical foundation, consumerism for its breeding, and the city as the hotbed for its spreading, human body as the core for writing, and ugliness and everyday life as its aesthetic orientation. The objective depiction of the suppressed desire of women has its positive side for women's liberation and its negative side, as well, of meeting the needs of male scopophilia when those beauty-writers indulge in the maniac sexual desire and thus fall victim to the trap of the commercialism. In the novel I Love Dollars by Zhu Wen, the bazaar sexual adventure of father and son mirrors the real life where people suffer from both the wondering and the nothingness at the turn of the millennium. In this novel, in the clashes with money and sex, humanity finds itself in the very embarrassing situation of constant retreat and the constant struggle to prevail. But when humanity has love on its side, money is always defeated, a touching and consoling revelation. A new trend in poetry writing is poem of the lower part of the human body, the physical representation of desire. In fact, it has produced some excellent poems. However, the literary circle has not yet given its due attention to it. In contrast to the prostitute literature and the decayed love letters, such poems are more rebellious and subversive.As this thesis is a simultaneous exploration of the desire discourse, how to get the macroscopic view of this literary phenomenon is a big challenge, but this is also the innovation of the thesis. So far, the desire discourse hasn't received the due attention from the academic circle and the interpretation of some texts is mistaken and misleading. For this reason, the author makes scientific and objective comments on this current literary phenomenon and on the young writers involved in it in the hope that that they may get some helpful insights.