A Comparison Between Chinese And Western Spiritual Drift Theme Literatures In 20~th Century

In the vast field of literature, Spiritual Drift is a theme that never ends. Maksim Gorky had brought up the theoretic idea that literature equals to"Humanism". And Qian Liqun once also said literature is a study of human after all. As one of the branches in literary themes, Spiritual Drift does not only pay great attention to human, but also bring it up to human beings'spiritual level. Through human beings'various actions in spiritual movements, it arouses human beings'self-attention and substantial self-reflection. Spiritual Drift Theme has caught the world-wide attention, since different writers from different countries under different times, with strong humanistic concerns, have picked out different source materials and different literary patterns, adopted different techniques of expression, and endowed it with different explanations and deductions. And therefore literature works aiming at displaying this theme have been springing up in the history of literature at all times and in all counties. These literature works include poetry, drama, novel and many other literary patterns, which we conclude as Spiritual Drift Theme Literature.Hence, this paper takes Chinese and western Spiritual Drift Theme Literature in 20th century as object of study and lays out discussions in three chapters, majorly according to Parallel Study Technique which is frequently used when comparing literature.The first chapter is the general introduction of Spiritual Drift Theme Literature. Firstly, this paper defines Spiritual Drift Theme Literature, and sets a limit to the study scope. Secondly, this papers traces back to the Chinese and western literary traditions in Spiritual Drift Theme Literature. Lastly, this paper talks about the booming development of this theme in 20th century and the reason why. The second chapter lays out discussions about similarities between Chinese and western Spiritual Drift Theme Literature in three sections. The first section makes an investigation on the origin of Spiritual Drift, which is confusion about one's inner self, desolation of spiritual beliefs, and imbalance of values. The second section relates and analyzes"rootlessness", the peculiarity of spiritual drifters, which can be presented through spiritual drifters'inner experience and outer actions. The third section illustrates spiritual drifters'Sisyphus-type revolt. The third chapter deploys research on differences between Chinese and western Spiritual Drift Theme Literature in three aspects, different spiritual homes, different revolt extents, and different ending handlings. It also probes into the root causes of those differences from regional, historical, cultural and literary traditional angles.We can get a clear mind on study scope of Chinese and western Spiritual Drift Theme Literature, after reading the definition and explanation in the first chapter, understand its development, and affirm this paper's object of study. Based on the first chapter, the second and third chapter of this paper respectively probes into the similarities and differences between Chinese and western Spiritual Drift Theme Literature in 20th century. These two chapters are the key chapters in this paper, as the third chapter involves in culture analysis, and therefore is more prominent than the previous two chapters and weighs the most in this paper.