Cosmopolitanism In Literary Imagination

With the widening,deepening and speeding up of globalization,the world has become tightly interconnected,and paradoxically divided.Due to its elaboration on cultural roots,difference,empathy and hospitality,the ancient concept cosmopolitanism has once again come to the discursive center of scholars,philosophers and writers.Among them is Michael Ondaatje(1943-),one of the most renowned contemporary Canadian writers.The Canadian multicultural society breeds a new structure of thought in his novels that transcends post-colonial discourse's emphasis on binary oppositions.Openness to difference and the cultivation of empathy,two of core issues of cosmopolitanism,find powerful representations in his works.This dissertation explores the cosmopolitan subjects represented in Ondaatje's four major novels—In the Skin of a Lion(1987),The English Patient(1992),Anil's Ghost(2000)and The Cat's Table(2011).Drawing upon postcolonial theories and postmodern aesthetics,through a close reading of Ondaatje's cosmopolitan writings,this dissertation sketches and locates a navigational route of Ondaatje's novels: the cosmopolitan self,rootless cosmopolitanism and rooted cosmopolitanism.Apart from the introduction and the conclusion,this dissertation consists of four chapters.The introduction offers a general review of Ondaatje's fiction and life,and a critical literature review of his works both at home and abroad.In addition,a genealogy of cosmopolitanism,which establishes the basic theoretical framework of this dissertation,is included in the introductory part.Chapter One studies the construction of the cosmopolitan self in In the Skin of a Lion.By reconstructing Toronto in the early twentieth century,Ondaatje criticizes the racism and social imbalance in the multicultural society.He reflects upon the need for an alternative structure of thought towards difference in the age when transnational and cross-cultural interactions have become a norm.The protagonist's inability to talk and his desire for conversation provide the momentum for him to travel and interactwith others,enabling him to reconceive the self and the other.The intertextuality between this novel and The Epic of Gilgamesh(circa 2100 BC)embodies Ondaatje's primitive model of cosmopolitanism that difference should be regarded as an opportunity rather than a problem to be solved.Chapter Two focuses on the four traumatized characters in The English Patient and examines the theme of nationalism and rootless cosmopolitanism.Different from Anderson's community of the nation-state,which is based on the imagination of a shared past,the community in the novel is formed to get through the difficult present and strive for a shared future.Ondaatje innovatively approaches reading as a way of community building and regards reading itself as a cosmopolitan practice.In The English Patient,Ondaatje uses the fluid concept of memory as a narrative structure to deconstruct the relationship between nation-state and human conflicts.Though Ondaatje proposes the deceptive idea of rootless cosmopolitan,or “international bastard”,he questions its potential to quench the flames of violence.The second half of the novel criticizes the detachment from one's cultural roots,which is a prelude to the concept of rooted cosmopolitan in Anil's Ghost.Chapter Three reads Ondaatje's most controversial novel Anil's Ghost and shows how Ondaatje broadens his conceptualization of difference to the realm of gender.At the cost of incest,Anil rejects the expected identity for women in the patriarchal society.In response to criticism that Anil's Ghost is “apolitical”,this study points out that Ondaatje has a habit of detour with his political writing.The novel constructs a milieu to reflect upon the origin of ethnical conflicts in Sri Lanka and the possibility of healing at the individual level.Through the creation of Anil,a reverse-diaspora,Ondaatje unravels the construction of her identity,which invites interrogation and conversation on the role difference plays in the process.The Sri Lankan anthropologist Sarath's acceptance of Anil in the end reveals Ondaatje's vision of cosmopolitan as someone who can keep their cultural roots yet still embrace hybridity at the same time.Chapter Four approaches Ondaatje's heavily autobiographical novel,The Cat's Table,as a cosmopolitan Bildungsroman in its consideration of how Ondaatje uses theinnocence of the adolescent narrator Michael as a metaphor to dramatize the construction of the cosmopolitan self.Reading against Arnaold Van Gennep's concept“a rite of passage”,this chapter traces Michael's construction of self while interacting with strangers during the three-week sea voyage,revealing the initiation of difference he receives on the ship.Ondaatje boldly launches his cosmopolitan project in a genre that has been associated with the cultivation of nationalism,which is undoubtedly a dramatization of his proposition of embracing difference as an opportunity and his appreciation of cultivating empathy.The concluding section briefly summarizes the main arguments of the dissertation,pointing out that Ondaatje's novels deconstructs many stereotyped binaries.It also generalizes the development of the cosmopolitan thinking in his literary imagination.In short,this dissertation attempts to study Ondaatje's fiction in the context of globally flourishing studies of cosmopolitanism and the recognition of a Community of Shared Future with the expectation to offer a Chinese perspective to the global discussion of cosmopolitanism and Ondaatje's works.The transformation from singular to hybridity is true to the development of the concept as well.That Ondaatje's fiction emphasizes on the cultivation of empathy through reading sheds light on the positive role that reading and literary criticism can play in the construction of a Community of Shared Future.