A Study On Theme Of Wang Anyi's Novels

Researchers of contemporary literature are not unfamiliar with Wang Anyi, who is among the leading writers of the contemporary literature in China. Her career as a writer starting from the mid-70s and including the period of the New Times, Wang Anyi has been plowing the fields of literary creation for thirty years. She is a prolific writer of various types of literature, the majority of her works is novels, although she has touched the such kinds of themes as essays, dramas, and the theory of novel creation. Indeed, she is a writer of great achievement. It is a fact that her novels are a focus of literature research. Great as the number of researches is concerning Wang Anyi's novels, the subject matter of the researches is rather limited to the interpretation of a single novel, several novels, or to the generalization of her literary creation in one period or some periods. Therefore, there is a significant shortage of an overall research of her literary creation as a whole. The present thesis will identify the four kinds of subject matter covering her novel creation and generalize three themes of her novels, aiming to organize her literary creation and therefore, shedding light to objective understanding of her novels. In doing so, the author of the thesis resorts to description based on the texts. The novels read cover the period from the 1970s to the beginning of the 21st century.The whole thesis consists of four chapters in addition to an introduction, concluding remarks and the appendix.The first chapter describes the history of Wang Anyi's novel creation. Following the chronic order of her works in combination with her life experience, the author classifies the themes of the novels into four types as follows: the juvenile, the Right-Intellectual Youth-the Cultural Revolution, the Cultural Work Team-Musical theme, and urban life. The four types are characteristic of all her novels of different periods, and it makes sense to describe them to illustrate the overall features of her works, following the date the novels are published.In the second chapter, the author surveys the sex themes of Wang Anyi's novels. The works involved in this part is arranged in accordance with the dates of the publication, extending from the end of 1970s to the 21st century. Beginning with the love affairs, marriage, and sexual life in the relation between both sexes, the author makes a wholesome portray of the implications of love, marriage and sexual life emerging from the novels in different periods. Therefore, the manifestation of diverse aspects of the relation between sexes is made possible with the description.The third chapter is concerned with the themes of nationalities. This is done by tracing the connotation indicated in her works of different periods. To be exact, in her novels the reflection on the nationalities is revealed step by step from a dot to an area. In the period from the middle 1980s to early 90s, her meditation is focused on the existence of the individuals. In the middle 80s, the reflection is the major part on the traditional national culture in a closed environment. But in the period from the 90s to the early 21st century, the reflection shifts to the nationalities from different countries against the background of globalization.Chapter four deals with the themes of geographical regions. In depicting the themes, the author takes as example her impression of the city of Shanghai and her best novel A Song of Ever-lasting Regret. This part tries to give a full portray of the regional features she constructed based on her understanding and awareness of the city of Shanghai in the special historical period. In A Song of Ever-Lasting Regret, Wang Anyi constructs the urban features of Shanghai by describing the changes taking place in the history of the city from the mid-40s to the mid-80s. The changes are demonstrated through the 40 years'daily life of Wang Qiyao, the heroine of the novel. As a result, the present chapter, starting from the time arrangement of the narration of the novel, that is the period from the mid-40s to the end of the decade, from the end of 40s to the mid-60s, and from the 70s to the mid-80s, presents the regional features that are shown by Wang Qiyao's daily life.The concluding part presents the summarization of Wang Anyi's novels and the features of her novel creation. In this part the author also points out the significance and value of Wang Anyi's works in the history of contemporary literature, apart from the scope of further research on the text and Wang Anyi's literary creation.The appendix contains things like Wang Anyi's life experience, the publications of her works, the materials used in the research of Wang Anyi's literary creation, which furthers includes the chronicle, the catalogue of the first publication, catalogue of Wang Anyi's works, and the resources for the research of Wang Anyi.