Soul Where

Welleck, an American scholar in comparative literature, once declared something to the effect that all great writers have their own worlds, which might be part of the experimental world around themselves. However, this world is a unique one and is quite different from the experimental world. In his examples, he mentioned Wessex in Hardy's novels. According to Welleck's theory, contemporary Chinese writer Jia Pingwa also has his own unique world-Shangzhou. Enlightened by this, I intend to find more similarities between Hardy and Jia Pingwa, even though they may at first glance seem worlds and not just nations apart.Both Hardy and Jia Pingwa were bom in the countryside but had life experience in big cities. The difference is that Hardy finally chose to live in the countryside for the rest of his life while Jia Pingwa just did the opposite. He lives in the city. However, it makes no difference where they live, whether big cities or countryside, because once their spiritual homeland is in the countryside where they were born. What's more, their works share similar writing backgrounds, under the great social change and upheaval. In a word, both Hardy's and Jia Pingwa's works are deeplyrooted in the very countryside they were born. Homeland complex is the perfect image in their works and also the source of their works. Both of them show great coacern about the predicament of human existence and the ultimate habitation of Man's soul, which are profoundly embodied in their works: The Return of the Native and Gao Lao Zhuang respectively. By using Jung and Schopenhauer's philosophicalviewpoints, the thesis gives a tentative probing into the above-mentioned two writers and their works.