Foreign Literary Influence And Zhang Jie’s Novels Writing

Accompanied by the development of Chinese literature in the new period of China, Zhang Jie has gained a continuous artistic growth and achievement. With a keen sensation and bravery, she made herself a pioneer and representative writer both in "Literature in the New Period" and "Women Literature" fields. Hence, when we conduct the study of these two paragraphs of literature history, especially the writers of individual cases, Zhang Jie should never be overlooked. From her first appearance to the literature circle at her fourth decade till now, Zhang Jie’s life and career as a professional writer lasted almost 40 years. For the pursuit of self-transcendence, she went through several literature writing stages, during which a few changes in style are quite noticeable. Zhang Jie’s works embody a vivid and dense characteristic which reflects an individual life experience of her own. Undoubtedly, the influence of foreign literature on her also functions as an important factor affecting her literature creation. Zhang Jie once said that her literature reading started from a Grimm’s fairy tales, fables by Krylov and Andersen’s Fairytales. In addition to Chinese culture, she also took in Western culture as the source of nutrition to nourish her wisdom. In early childhood, Zhang Jie read a lot of Russian and Soviet Russian literature works, considering the Chinese "red culture" placed such a huge era language context. Therefore, there always exists a "Soviet Russia Complex" within her heart and mind. In early eighties of last century, Zhang Jie joined Chinese Center of PEN. Meanwhile, with her novels spreading and the expansion of their influence abroad, she was able to participate in various international literature activities frequently, then she chose to take an oversea long stay as a visitor. All these experiences excited the exchanges with foreign writers and literature, and her cognition of literature, both from form to concept has begun the integration to the world literature. From a specific angle, the influence of foreign literature helped Zhang Jie see another horizon of literature. In conversations and collision with a variety of heterogeneous literature, Zhang Jie constantly adjusted her thinking pattern and aesthetic paradigms. Thus, it can be concluded that if we observe and try to locate the reasons why Zhang Jie pursuit a constantly changing literature style, the influence of foreign literature and acceptance should be taken into a serious consideration. However, putting aside the fruitful academic research on Zhang Jie’s works, the systematic research of influence from foreign Literature on her is rarely seen. From the perspective of comparative literature, this paper aims at examining the relationship between Zhang Jie and foreign literature, trying to clarify acceptance of foreign literature and creative transformation in Zhang Jie’s novels, and outline the path of influence from foreign literature and the transmutation of her literature creation. It is also the concern of this paper that by what ways the influence of the "exotic" and "local complex" features is presented or reflected in Zhang Jie’s works. In addition to the introduction and conclusion, this paper consists of four chapters.The introduction describes the status and influence of Zhang Jie in domestic and foreign literature circles. It also analyzes the dual opportunity of her writing and foreign influence acceptance. On the basis of commenting the current domestic and abroad study status of this topic, this thesis illustrates its methodology and academic value. Mining for the potential and important influence on the literature writing of Zhang Jie from foreign Literature as such a special resource not only provides new ideas and explores new spaces for the study of the novels by Zhang Jie, but also exhibits a research path of reference value and research model pattern for the study of Chinese contemporary writers influenced by exotic fragments in oversea literature.Chapter one focuses on the agreement and correspondence between Russian literature and the early novels of Zhang Jie. Inevitably, like other writers of the New Period of China, the attachment between Zhang Jie’s early stage literature writing and the Russian literature is mainly caused by that era of special historical and cultural context, which should better be categorized into a collective crowd memory. In addition to writing about the factors affecting the whole nation in that historic period, Zhang Jie’s writing represents a filtering and alternating mechanism based on her personal individual experience. When writing, instead of simply emulating a specific writer, work or school, Zhang Jie did more work to wander through a corridor of a comprehensive artistic temperament and grasped the spirit of ideological of the Russian Soviet literature, seeking for inspiration and methods, and then strived to refine and represent the view of a nation’s real life. Thus, Zhang Jie’s early novels realize the mutual penetration of Russian literature and Chinese life reality. "Never retreat and stick to the holy ideal" is the "birthmark" of Russian literature. Such a spiritual transcendence against the heavy and dusty reality, focusing on human ideals and always concerning about the attitude towards human survival status, all those elements reflected to the artistic description and reality narration, both serves as the knot to connect the Russian Literature and the literature writing of Zhang Jie mostly and firstly. Compared to the firmness and steadiness fortified in the power of will featuring even signifying the Russian literature in terms of the idealism, Zhang Jie’s work presents an experience of inner anxiety. The humanitarian writing of Russian literature owns two spiritual qualities. They are pitiful universal fraternity and female role images of extremely passionate humanitarian. When constructing her discourse towards the history and reality of China, the deep humanitarian spirit of Russian literature forged the very basic writing impulse of Zhang Jie. Therefore, her early literature world is filled with eye-catching humanity and the emotional beauty of human race. The difference lies here:the humanitarian of Russian and Soviet writers always go with an "a tearful smile", which carries or is intentionally placed with writer’s own deep sympathy and pitiful compassion; Zhang Jie speaks for a resolute safeguard and a fighting spirit for the dignity and rights of women. Poetic language constructs both the basis of Russian Literature and artistic Utopia of Zhang Jie, but if we look into the atmosphere on the narrative level, the Russian literature can find everywhere the liquidity of poetic thinking, while Zhang Jie’s writing is based on streams of feeling.Chapter two concentrates on the relationship between European and American Modernism Literature trend and the fission plus mutation of Zhang Jie mid stage novels. After western literature trends rushed into China in 80’s last century, Zhang Jie quickly replaced her writing stand from era context of late 1970s to the one of early 1980s, absorbing nutrients from western literature, which led to an extension of the literature vision and thinking space. The spirit of rationality has gone throughout the whole Western literature tradition, which exhibited the human racial spirits of self criticizing, doubting, being a truth seeker and scientific exploration for universal truth. After the mid-1980s, the development of Western Gender Theory laid a greater influence on Zhang Jie, which broke her perfect images of love and gender relationship. Since then, a gender contradictions and opposition, tension began to take places in her works. Subsequently, the confusion traced back to gender gap and the notice even serious thought about the confusion came to her literature text. This skepticism could be found in her later literature writing. The "Evil Carnival" in European and American literature is a refraction of social and cultural trends and philosophical development. It appears to open up and enrich the literature horizon and space and consequently, some fields neglected or ignored by conventional aesthetic value, such as instinct, desire, dream, etc, were given a positive affirmation in terms of their artistic value. As the influence of European and American modernism literature introduction and translation went on, along with the western philosophy tides and emotions towards the end of 20th century, in addition to the understanding and exploration of living reality, Zhang Jie’s writing showed a shift from the pursuit of the ideals to the exposure of those evil, falseness and ugliness. During this period, her language style became harsh, mean and full of sarcasm with an intention to present a specific textual view:the selfishness and the ugly reality of living conceal and bury the holiness and dignity of human life. With a solemn eye-sight Zhang Jie cracks the shell of human nature to uncover its ugly sides, it’s hypocritical parts and weak points, which can be also interpreted as peeling the mask of life off and shock the reader with the hammer of nudity, hypocrisy and ugliness in people’s real life. The reference value of European and American literature reflected in Zhang Jie’s writing can be concluded along three paths:observing from the angle of content and the ideological sense of her novels, the expression of the absurdity and distortion or mutation are of significant effect; In terms of tactics of artistic expression, we can never bypass the change of narrative perspective and a fragmented mosaic of narrative time-line management; as for the narrative effect, in her late works Zhang Jie managed to form a foreignness and ambiguous interpretation possibility by the text.Chapter three mainly analyzes the influence of Latin America Fantastic Realism on recent novels by Zhang Jie. Among contemporary writers, Zhang Jie successfully forged a "late stage style". In order to write the novel:"A soul to wander ", she boarded the 4,300 meters altitude in Peru when she was 69 years old, seeking for a deeper understanding of the Inca culture by meeting original residents there. She admitted that Borges is her favorite South American writer, while considering Marquez as a " player of all trades but master of none" like writer. Because of the influence of the recent Latin American literature, her novels took on a new look, which means she once again completed the transformation of her literature career. "Hundred Years of Solitude" is the coral theme of Latin American literature, which expresses the solitude experience of the whole Latin America who were suffering from being isolated and rejected out of the modern civilized world, even cast outside the process of modernization and globalization. It is illustrated as a life full of loneliness which can be stated as "The whole race even the whole continent is stuck in a great but futile struggle". Zhang Jie showed much identification to the solitude theme of Latin American literature, and revised the ideal and love in her previous works, giving up the usual writing pattern. As she went deeper and deeper into the secret and hidden place of the human nature, she conducted her writing with "a wandering soul" to express the endless loneliness and the feeling of everything beyond people’s reach. Latin American literature owns a "fantastic sense", which is good at combining the astonishing realities and traditional fantasies based myths to draw a colorful picture of unique style, with the use of brilliant ideas and robust imagination. The readers might obtain a familiar and strange feelings spontaneously when trying to accept and decode the "specious, paradoxically "images. Zhang Jie’s novels always go with the "mysterious impression" aesthetic effect. By utilizing and describing ineffable fate and reincarnation, magic blood-line, mysterious supernatural force, lingering illusions, dreams, etc, she managed to create a mysterious and magnificent narrative atmosphere and successfully achieved the purpose of narration. In "Hundred Years of Solitude," the narrator seems like a prophet, who believes in all those miracles and myths, and considers the magic as reality and constantly talks about those. At the same time, because Macon is a fate and prophecy certainly to be brought to reality, the narrator unfolds his narration in a sheer storytelling mode. Comparatively, in "A soul to wander "and "life is too long", the narrator tells the story to speak out the impermanence of life, the eternal diaphragm and grief:people are so hard to reconciliation with the world. In such a story telling mode, with the pose of a dirge singer gesture, exist both a retrospective wallow threads, and enthusiasm to care for the people to fail plus the compassion for the sky to fall.The fourth chapter presents some instances of comparative reading and appreciation of works by Zhang Jie and some foreign writers. As a common sense accepted by all professional literature researchers, excellent writers cannot be made without a vast reading vista, the influence among writers is always diverse and complicated. Thus, it is more than difficult to determine and declare that a specific writer is only affected by one another, while, it is far away from being wise to state that by unspeakable and mysterious chances one single writer cannot be strongly and uniquely attached to one person of his own trade, or to give up tracking the specific influence between them. Talking about influence by one writer on another writer’s writing will not shelter the writer’s own artistic originality, but present more clearly and accurately the writer’s ability to innovate in the field of literature from the angle of comparative reading. The influence of Chekhov on Zhang Jie is enormous and profound:she once was so engaged in the spiritual fulcrum by Chekhov and regarded his works as literature writing templates. In the novels by Zhang Jie and Chekhov’s, "nobody" as narrative feature is very prominent everywhere in those stories. They both take the objective narrative strategy to "interfere into life" and to "slice" the ordinary daily living experience, presenting a concise, poetic text impression to readers. If we look at Zhang Jie’s midterm novels, her writing once presented a transition towards modernism. Through the observation of Zhang Jie’s work at this stage of her novel writing, the influence of Kafka can be located clearly. With the use of symbolism, plus other modernism artistic such as stream of consciousness, Zhang Jie tried to reveal the nothingness and absurdity of this world, exposing the embarrassment and helplessness of human existence, which reflects Zhang Jie’s intentional reference and inheritance to Kafka. As female writers, Zhang Jie and Charlotte Bronte both facing "female growing" problem, there does not only exist empathy, but the divergent ways of expression. By comparing the two autobiographical narrative fictions "Jane Eyre" and "No Word", this thesis reveals the cultural differences to cause the divergence between the growth of Western and Eastern female individuals. For once, Zhang Jie was tagged with the title "female Don Quixote," which designed to show the Miguel de Cervantes’Don Quixote "effect on her and her writing. Via conducting the comparison of image qualities and emotional orientations of Zhang Jie’s "Love Must Not Be Forgotten", "Ark", "No Word" and other works, can we find the "idealist in agony and trial", and if we look at "worrying lunatic knight" in "Don Quixote" by Cervantes, a proper and productive understanding of "exotic" and "localization" tackled by Zhang Jie while facing the anxious experience can be reached.The conclusion combed the path and pattern by which foreign literature did land influences on Zhang Jie’s writing, which can be regarded as a typical sample of the mutation of the influence from foreign literature. In this part, it also tries to figure out two trends while Zhang Jie conducted her writing, which can be shown as the following patterns:selection â†' agreement â†' creation and influence â†' selection â†' alienation. These two patterns indicate that the ways the contemporary Chinese mainland writers regularly employ, represented by Zhang Jie as a typical individual study case when facing, tackling and creatively, selectively absorbing the foreign literature influence. They interpret and make use of foreign culture elements according to their own cultural background and spiritual requirements of the era, which means those external factors have all been reinvented or localized and their exhibition in literature text must come from a pre-filtering procedure. As the collision and fusion with different cultures and literature took place, Zhang Jie and other Chinese mainland writers made some unique discoveries and re-interpretation of their own literature tradition. To promote the contemporary Chinese literature to stand firmly among the world literature schools with its own distinctive ethnic characteristics, they have made an honorable contribution of creativeness and originality.