A Comparative Study Of William Faulkner And Moyan

Nearly twenty years after the death of Nobel Prize winner, the renowned American writer William Faulkner, who established his literary fame by creating the fictional world of Yoknapatawpha, a star came on the literary scene of China in the 1980s and this was Mo Yan, who was born and raised in Gaomi County of Shandong Province which became the geographical setting of most of the stories and novels of this pioneering Chinese writer. Although living in different times, land and cultures, these two writers have much in common. Researchers have noticed the fact that Mo Yan was influenced by Faulkner to a certain degree and have done some research in this aspect, pinpointing how the former has cast his influence on the latter. They have, on top of the influence research, done some research in parallel studies to find out their similarities not related to influences. Meanwhile, as writers of importance in their own national literature, both Faulkner and Mo Yan have crossed borders and gained recognition in the literature of the other nation. Obviously, Faulkner has been accepted as a literary giant in China and is highly honored. In the recent years Chinese scholars' enthusiasm in doing research on him keeps going up just like the readings on the thermometer in midsummer while Mo Yan, with the translation and publication by Professor Howard Goldblatt of several of his novels in the U.S, has also aroused more and more interest in American readers. And scholars' interest in studying him is growing just like a seedling tree in spring. With the increase of literary and cultural exchange between the two nations, a comparative study of the two writers will not only deepen our understanding of the writers and their works, but will also be helpful to the mutual understanding and communication between the two nations. In view of this, this dissertation aims at comparatively studying William Faulkner and Mo Yan from such aspects as their artistic ideas, motifs and themes, characters, stylistic features and the road they followed to become novelist, to find out the similarities where they differ and differences where they resemble as well as the weaknesses and strong points, and on the basis of which, to make an appraisal of the literary values of their creations.The dissertation consists of three parts: introduction, body and conclusion.The introduction firstly gives a brief review of the translation, introduction and research of Faulkner in China and those of Mo Yan in the United States from the 1930sup until now, most of Faulkner's short stories have been translated and published in Chinese in the form of short story collections, and of his 19 novels 8 have been rendered into Chinese, some of which having even several Chinese versions. A few Faulknerian biographies written by Chinese scholars have been published alongside with those written by foreign scholars and translated into Chinese. In addition, a collection of commentaries on Faulkner by foreign scholars has been translated and published in Chinese. According to statistics from CDMD under CNKI 28 doctoral and master-degree dissertations have been written on Faulkner. Over the past decade, more than 200 articles on Faulkner have been published in various Chinese academic journals. These articles approached a major part of Faulkner's fiction from different angles and using different theories. As far as Mo Yan is concerned, 4 of his novels and 2 short story collections, namely Red Sorghum: A Novel of China, Garlic Ballads, The Republic of Wine, Big Breasts & Wide Hips, Shifu, you'll do anything for a laugh, Explosions and Other Storie, have been translated into English and published in the United States. A dozen of academic articles have been published on him, of which some praised him for his uniqueness from an ideological point of view, some acclaimed his imagination and some discussed his exploration of human nature. The remaining part of the introduction, after briefly introducing the research work done by Chen Chunsheng, Li Yingfeng and American scholar Thomas Inge on comparative studies of Faulkner and MoYan, puts forward the goal, sphere, focuses, design and principle in writing the dissertation, which is to do the research in a way that "combines historical method with critical spirit, archives study with text analysis and the prudence of the sociologist with the audacity of the esthetician."The body of the dissertation falls into 4 chapters, doing parallel comparison respectively on artistic growth, the artistic ideas, motifs and themes, characters, artistic features of the two writers.Chapter One is divided into 5 sections. Section One, from a biographical point of view, surveys how the folk tales that they were exposed to and the literary works they read in their childhood shaped and influenced their interest in literature and their writing, looks into the psychological factors that stirred their desires to become writers, and traces the setbacks they underwent and the help they got in the course of their development as writers. Section Two, surveying historically the cultural traditions with the special characteristics of their regions as well as the special Zeitgeist at the time of radical socialchanges and how these factors worked on their writing, points out that they both inherited as well as rejected their traditional and regional cultures and that they were both able to capture in their writing the spirit of their times. Section Three, based on historical evidences and textual analysis, discusses their relationship with their homeland: the homeland is the fountainhead of their artistic creation, and a stage of performance as well; although focusing on the people and events of their native land for artistic creation, they were able to go beyond the boundaries to lend to their writing a sense of generality. Section Four attempts to divide their writing career into stages according to the change of their themes and artistic styles, concluding that their artistic creation can both be divided into three stages from the stage of imitating and following the mainstream literature through the stage of uttering their independent voices and establishing their own special fictional world to the final stage of decline due to their inability to transcend what they had achieved. Section Five compares the two writers' artistic ideas in such aspects as art and human nature, art and truthfulness, art and originality, and art and the writer's will to express himself and his obligation to instruct.Chapter Two through Chapter Four are mainly text analyses. In Chapter Two, such themes as exploration of evil, the representation of family relationship, the depiction of romantic love, narration of family history and treatment of death are examined in the comparison of the two writers. By describing and exposing various kinds of social and cultural evils and the characters' wicked behaviors Faulkner and Mo Yan criticize the existing social systems, cultural traditions and evil side of human nature itself. In their representation of family relationship, the relationship between parents and children is cold and hostile and that between the siblings is a relationship of jealousy and hatred, like ice and fire in some cases. Such unhappy family relationship reflects the writers' social criticism and can be traced biographically into their own family life. In their treatment of romantic love, they both demonstrate a modern idea of love: love should be a combination of the physical and the spiritual and one should not favor the one and neglect the other. And the different patterns of love relationship among the characters reflect to a certain extant the writers' own emotional needs, inclination and experiences. Their narration of family history is another point of similarity. They both presented pictures of the family's decline from grandeur to disintegration and explored the underlying reasons, which demonstrate the authors' similar viewpoint of history. In the treatment of death, they both focus on its social indication rather than on its ontologicalessence. To them, death is often a way out of difficulty, though sometimes it serves as a means of portrayal of the characters responsible for causing people to die. Description of death constitutes an important aspect of their social criticism and examination of human nature.Chapter three takes five groups of characters for contrastive analysis. These are the tough guys, military men, young women, rascals and the lower class people. The similarities and differences of these characters are analyzed in detail and the reasons for such portrayal are explored in such aspects as the writers' ideology, psychology and culture. In Faulkner's works, the tough guys are unyielding because they are governed by their ideals and principles, but in Mo Yan's works, the tough guys are valorous because of the intrinsic wild in their nature. The military men in Faulkner's works are concerned about proving their heroicness, preserving their honor and dignity and protecting their rights. They are larger than the ordinary man. Those in Mo Yan's works are concerned about the things in their daily life and were often vexed by their carnal desires. They are just ordinary men in military uniforms. The young women Faulkner and Mo Yan portray in their works share many similarities, but the different types of women characters display the wrtiters' different attitudes toward women. Faulkner is sympathetic to women, but is also satirical and contemptuous of them, while Mo Yan worships women, with a tinge of eroticism. Through the rascals they portray the writers express their denial and condemnation of certain personalities, qualities and values. Faulkner's rascals are those mean in behavior, merciless at heart and devoid of any moral sense, but they resort to their own power to do evil things while Mo Yan's rascals are local tyrants crushing the weak and the innocent using the power that the government gives them. The writers have also created an array of lower class people of similar characteristics. Here Faulkner differs from Mo Yan in that he is more sympathetic than critical while Mo Yan, although strongly sympathetic, is harshly critical of these downtrodden people.Chapter Four makes a comparative analysis of Faulkner's and Mo Yan's artistic characteristics, touching on such aspects as their imagination, poeticing of their prose, novel structure, narrative angles and linguistic features. They are both very imaginative, but Mo Yan is good at imagining external events in daily life while Faulkner is good at imagining internal activities; Faulkner is rational and knows where to stop while Mo Yan is passionate and easily loses control of his imagination. They both endeavor to make their prose poetic by lessening the importance of plot and characterization, byfeeling-orientated narration and by insertion into their writing picturesque descriptions of natural scenery. They pay much attention to the structures of their novels and endeavor to enhance the interest and attraction of their fiction. By disrupting the chronological order of events, they make the plots fragmental, blurring and chaotic, thus expanding the implication of and tension in the novels. They experiment with various kinds of narrative angles, but Mo Yan's experiments often end up in failure due to his disregard of basic rules while Faulkner's experiments generally succeed in enhancing the artistic expressiveness due to his willingness to observe basic rules in his attempt to innovate. They are both very much language-conscious, but as far as diction is concerned Faulkner is far superior to Mo Yan. They both have their particular set of vocabulary, but Faulkner's vocabulary adds to the beauty of his expression while Mo Yan's vocabulary betrays low taste. Faulkner is able to build long, exquisite and powerful sentences while Mo Yan lacks such ability. Faulkner's metaphors are true expressions while Mo Yan's are not in most cases. In giving the characters their idiosyncratic language Faulkner is a master-hand while Mo Yan is not so skillful.The conclusion gives a summary of the issues that have been discussed in the previous parts and stresses the major points. Although comparative literature does not aim at making a distinction to tell which nation's literature is better than the others, the author of this dissertation holds that since the purpose of comparison is to find the strong points and the weaknesses of the parties involved , then in the comparison of any two writers and their works, a responsible researcher should not refrain from setting the good apart from the bad and making corresponding value judgments. So on the basis of the comparisons done so far, the author of this dissertation concludes that Faulkner and Mo Yan are equally accurate and penetrating in their examination and criticism of the politics, society and culture in their corresponding countries, but Mo Yan is not as good a humanist as Faulkner in that his writing lacks the moral impact of Faulkner's writing and in the aspect of artistic styles, Mo Yan is a far cry from Faulkner as a stylist.