Marginal People In A Dilemma

This thesis has done a comparative study between two works of different countries and time, Jennie Gerhardt the masterpiece of the American novelist in the 20th century Theodore Dreiser and Gao Xing, the latest novel of the contemporary Chinese writer Jia Pingwa by the employment of Bakhtin's Coronation and de-coronation in his carnival poetics.Jennie Gerhardt and Gao Xing shared similarities in terms of historical, social and cultural background. Hence doing research of these two novels interprets the same social trends and conflicts of different countries under the specific historical and cultural background namely the transitional period of industrialization and urbanization. The reason to concentrate on the comparative study on these two novels lies in the fact that these two novels are set in the same point of penetration namely living conditions and fate of the marginal people. Having poor families to support, the protagonists Jennie and Liu Gaoxing made same hard decision to make their own living in big cities and ended up with marginal images.Based on analysis of common points of American and Chinese literature in the transitional period, this thesis illustrates similar carlivalized narrative structure of the two novels aiming at delving into new areas of study on them by Coronation:Jennie and Liu Gaoxing experienced the special life which is different from their original rustication in the process of their pursuit of city life temporarily. Their special life experiences resemble the coronation ceremony of the "fake king/queen" who was chosen from clowns or beggars; de-coronation:nevertheless, as an unwed widow and city junkman, these two protagonists' humble birth and current status make them unacceptable and despised by the two classes of the society. This is in accordance with the de-coronation ceremony in which the "fake king/queen will be divested, knocked down, and teased. By comparison between the two novels, this thesis attempts to analyze the similar coronation and de-coronation of the two protagonists so as to have a deeper interpretation of the two novels and to find out the resemblance between American literature and Chinese literature during the transitional period.