On Alice Munro's Rethink Of Traditional Humanism In Her Novels

Alice Munro(1931-)is one of the most outstanding writers in Canadian literary world and the Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 2013.The Nobel Prize Committee speaks highly of her fantastic portraying of humanity,which is a commendation for the intense and unique humanistic thought in her novels.Focusing on the core problems of Humanism,such as human nature,rationality,truth,freedom,ethics,and so on,and on the trivial and trite of the ordinary people,her novels show a concealed and astonishing world,which reflects her creative purpose of deconstructionism.The cracked,ambiguous and even contradictory storytelling techniques in her novels declare the significant difference between her writing and the traditional humanistic creation.The present study is centered on the relationship between the humanistic thought in Alice Munro's novels and the traditional Humanism in the west,and the underlying reason of her literary thoughts,which provides a case to understand the intricate relationship among the Humanism,social and historical background and the literary creation.Humanism forms an ideological trend in the period of Renaissance.Its core is the concern for the existence and value of human beings and its driving force is criticism and reform.The traditional Humanism with its peak in the 19th century shows gradually it.s potential hidden perils of anthropocentrism,the supremacy of reason and science and temporalism which ignore the limitation of human beings and the finitude of science and become the bottleneck of traditional Humanist's development.It has been criticized since the end of 19th century.With the development and continuous influence of the critical philosophies reflecting on the traditional ideas in the 20th century,the criticism of the traditional humanism has been more comprehensive and profound in the intellectual circle.Alice Munro is influenced greatly by the thoughts of Nietzsche and Heidergger and the critical philosophies inspired by them.Her 14 collections reflect the author's rethink of the traditional Humanism,or the author's inheritance,criticism and transcendence of the traditional Humanism from different aspects and in varying degrees.Alice Munro's novels inherit the reasonable part of the traditional Humanism:proceeding from breaking the control of religion,they show solicitude for the basic human needs for survival,respect the value of reason and science in eliminating ignorance and promoting the self-development of human beings,oppose asceticism and encourage the pursuit of happiness in this world.At the same time,under the guidance of existentialism,perspectivism,deconstructivism,and so on,most part of the novels reflect on the illogical notions of foundationalism and absolutism in the traditional humanism.Her novels prove the arrogance of anthropocentrism that ignores the limitation of human beings by revealing the activeness and passiveness of human being and displaying the nature's power;they criticize the supremacy of reason and science that neglects the finiteness of reason and science and believes the cooperation of reason and science is the only solution to everybody's problems by presenting the limitation of reason and the subjective elements in objective knowledge;and they condemn the self-indulgence of temporalism that overlooks the limit of freedom and the inborn responsibility of human beings by demonstrating the ethical dilemma caused by the ideas of absolute freedom and self-interest.On the basis of criticism and negation,her novels remold the tradition Humanism.The novels hold that the human beings should discard the delusion of anthropocentrism to establish a harmonious relationship between the mankind and the nature for the future with the help of constructive postmodernism,and to accept the contingency of the world actively;they adopt an affable view on reason and science to deal with the problems of reason and knowledge,which means to identify the optimal state of reason in balancing the reason and unreason and to put the knowledge in perspective under the guidance of dialectics to realize the all-round development of human beings;and they advocate a noble-minded secular pursuit that is to go beyond oneself to reach the real freedom and to construct other-oriented morality to break through the ethical dilemma caused by the temporalism in traditional Humanism.The artistic expression in the novels embodies Alice Munro's rethink of the traditional Humanism fully.The art methods of discreteness,including nonlinear narrative and metanarrative in the novels,deconstruct the center of the text,disclose the passiveness of human beings and the independence of the world,and overturn the anthropocentrism in the traditional Humanism;The art methods of indeterminacy,including polyphony and combination of history and fiction in the novels,challenge the certainty and authenticity of the text and disrupt the supremacy of reason and science in the traditional Humanism;The art methods of reflection,including paradox,irony and open ending in the novels,emphasize the pervasiveness of contradiction,caution people against the hazards caused by the self-indulgence of temporalism and demonstrate the necessity of self-reflection and self-transcendence.The rethink of the traditional humanism in Alice Munro's novels is derived from the author's personal experience,the Canadian social and cultural surrounding and the influence of the thoughts of Nietzsche and Heidergger and the critical philosophies inspired by them.The sufferings of Alice Munro's family and of her childhood and her struggles to survive trigger her doubt about the rationality of anthropocentrism,rationalism,everlasting value and other notions of traditional humanism;the conflicts in her family,the literary edification and Canadian history from a backward British colony to a modern developed country that has overtaken the Great Britain make her believe the indeterminacy of things and go deep into the rethink of traditional Humanism;the thoughts of Nietzsche and Heidergger and the critical philosophies inspired by them stimulate her to reflect on the traditional humanism and provided theoretical basis for her rethink.The rethink of the traditional Humanism helps Alice Munro inherit and develop further the advantages of traditional novels built on the traditional Humanism in a critical way,expand the subjects of traditional novels and innovate the artistic presentation,which has distinctive value in the literature history.The rethink in the novels shows the aesthetic standpoint of intersubjectivity and the aesthetic orientation of diversity,which is a kind of postmodern aesthetic exploration.At the same time,the rethink in Alice Munro's novels represents the expectation to build an up-to-date humanistic thought and provides reference for the construction of humanistic thought in China of a new era,which is of some ideological and realistic significance.