The Writing Of Ruins From The Perspective Of Benjamin’s Aesthetic Theory

In the book The Origin of German Tragic Drama,Benjamin discussed the transformation from classical tragedy to German Baroque mourning drama,and put forward the theory of ruins aesthetics.This theory takes the image of fragmented ruins as the object of expression,and takes allegory as the representation form,thus writing a kind of collapse in the overall sense,showing the modern generation’s desire and prospect of salvation in the shadow of war.The existence of fragmented ruins is an internal representation.As an external representation,allegory expresses the existence of ruins with the aesthetic characteristics of fragmentation,melancholy and polysemy.Therefore,Baroque mourning plays supports its inner idea in a broken form and aims to realize the desire of redemption in the ruins through the reconstruction of fragments.Through the combination of Benjamin’s theory and Woolf’s "trilogy of life",this paper aims to explore the distinctive characteristics of ruins creating in her novels.The ruins world in Woolf’s novels is characterized by fragmentation,melancholy and polysemy,which deduces the antinomy between death and rebirth,and indicates the possibility of salvation in the ruins.Death and rebirth are united in the same person,and this rebirth is a kind of redemption through death.In the transformation of life and death,women have the unique strength to save the ruins and represent the hope of human future.Ruins writing reflects the crisis of self-identity in the modern society,and expresses the writer’s reflection on modernity and deep concern for the fate of mankind.In the perspective of modernism,the ruins creating reveals the culture division problems such as the loss of tradition,the conflict between mediocrity and belief,and the separation of spirit and body.This thesis takes Woolf’s "trilogy of life" as the analysis text,and studies it from the perspective of ruins aesthetics to make the life redemption appeal and hidden female power buried in the ruins world emerge from the surface of the text and enter the reader’s cognitive horizon.