A Qualitative Study Of Yan Geling's Novels

Yan Geling is a leading contemporary Chinese writer,who now lives overseas and engages herself abundantly in literary writing.Since 1980s,Yan has produced a great many of excellent works.In the long process of writing,Yan has maintained enormous passion for writing as well as a serious attitude toward writing,which have brought her to be one of the best writers in contemporary literature.This dissertation,through a vigorous examination of the existing research,has identified a number of limitations in the studies on Yan's novels.First,these studies mainly focus on the female characters in Yan's works,with little research attention to the male characters.Second,there lacks in-depth research into Yan's perspective to history as demonstrated in her novels.Third,studies on Yan's art of language need to further enriched.Last but least,most studies have highly praised Yan's works,with few studies adopting critical approaches.The first chapter examines the styles and features of Yan's novels with an emphasis on how her works manage to tell interesting and insightful stories.The second chapter discusses the feminine world created in Yan's novels through an analysis of her female characters.The third chapter,by investigating her male characters,examines how Yan depicts her male characters and her attitudes toward them.The fourth chapter discusses the art of language embodied in Yan's novels and the possible gains and losses of such language.The fifth chapter focuses on the themes of Yan's novels,and discusses how she writes about history and how she contemplates on human nature in her novels.This dissertation holds that Yan's novels have made substantial contribution to the contemporary Chinese literature.First,Yan,s novels have created a batch of typical characters that have enriched the portfolio of literary characters.Second,Yan has adopted a unique perspective to write history in literary works.While displaying the breadth and vitality of the Chinese history,or the contemporary Chinese history in particular,this approach to history demonstrates Yan's courage to examine the history critically.Third,Yan has probed into the richness and complexity of human nature,exhibiting the possibility of understanding and forgiving between the two genders and among all human beings.Fourth,Yan's novels exhibit diversified writing styles,which combine brevity,calm and humor into the narrative charisma.Over the recent years,Yan has mainly focused on writing about the contemporary Chinese society,with little attention to overseas Chinese or Chinese immigrants.However,due to a lack of profound understanding of the contemporary Chinese society,Yan has not surpassed her own works from a literary perspective.The recommendations are thus that Yan could write on contemporary Chinese topics in short stories and novellas,and should attend closely to overseas Chinese.It is hoped that Yan could further promote her influence across the world and thus bring more Chinese writers to the international arena of literature.