The Study Of Maugham's Exotic Traveling Books

Questing is part of human nature. Many novelists and poets show their inner sorrow through questing, such as Li Qingzhao's seeking and searching and Qu Yuan's exploring in spite of the hardship on the way). In novels, questing often assumes the form of "the theme of journey". Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and Wu Cheng'en's Pilgrimage to the West are such examples. The British writer, William Somerset Maugham, a great traveler, had been seeking, in the form of traveling and writing, his ideal spiritual home throughout the whole world. He makes an attempt to look for his ideal state of balance and harmony in the dilemma of reality and spirit. He is unique in that he had constructed a whole new paradise outside the traditional western culture and creates a totally different life. In this thesis, Maugham's three exotic traveling books are examined and studied, and his characteristic questing after exotic culture is analyzed.In the preface, on the basis of the analysis of the so-called Maugham Phenomenon and the current situation of the study of his exotic writings, the value and significance of this thesis is put forward.ChapterⅠintroduces Maugham's life of traveling and its influence on his writing. In his life, Maugham enjoys traveling and he travels widely around the world, in which he explores the subject for his writings and powers his creativity. Constant traveling dominates his life, and influences his understanding of himself, his life and the world. Meanwhile, he acquires a kind of a transcendental, third-person perspective and sufficient space experiences. This is one of the characteristics of his writing.ChapterⅡ,ⅢandⅣare the main parts of the thesis, which analyze Maugham's three exotic traveling books. Based on close reading, it focuses on the analysis of Maugham's Orient, which is constructed in his mind. In The Gentleman in the Parlour, Maugham presents a beautiful landscape through the vividly-described journey, implying the writer's desire for returning to nature and seeking poetic dwellings. In On a Chinese Screen, people of all sorts are vividly pictured. Two groups of silhouettes of the characters are placed on the same Chinese screen and in this way a dynamic cultural intercourse is formed. The traveling in Don Fernando, or Variations on Some Spanish Themes offeres us a picture of Spanish culture, in which the true essence of life, art and religion is explored. In the above three quite different cultures—Chinese reserve, Thai and Burmese simplicity, and Spanish boldness and unconstraint, he finds out the same nature—the original state of human life. Thus, these three exotic traveling books can be seen as a sort of original life state of people, emotional experiences of life and hymns to people.ChapterⅤcan be regarded as an extension part where Maugham records the exotic travels directly and recreates them by interweaving his thoughts and knowledge into the novels and thereby builds a quite exotic space. The special travels across the regional boundaries make it possible that different cultures exchange with each other in different ways. Consequently, he goes beyond his native cultural surroundings and experiences the exotic cultures and then makes a contrast. A kind of dynamic character of transversal culture exchange appears in his exotic traveling books and people's experiences in the process of questing. Both material and spiritual dwellings are revealed.ChapterⅥ, as the conclusion, relates theories and the connotation of Maugham's constructing of an exotic space. His exotic space, now defined as the Third Space, is a particular, cultural one which was built between the west and the east. He observes and studies the relationship thoroughly between the cultures of the east and the west, and tries to solve the problem:how to construct one's cultural identity. The Third Space assumes the form of the state of simplicity and innocence in pre-modern times, in which people and the world coexist in harmony. It is a poetic dwelling. The mode of returning home or returning to nature, is a common phenomenon in the development of culture. It reflects the progress of civilization by means of idealizing the past. This cultural psychology is named primitivism. Accordingly, Maugham's criticism of modern civilization and definition of people's ideal existence is based on this ideal primitivism.