On Pearl S.Buck's"China Novel"Study

Pearl S. Buck (1892—1973), American notable female writer, was awarded Noble literature prize for her Chinese novels and her parents'biography in 1938 and was "universally acknowledged the most influential western writer describing China ever since Marco Polo in the 13th century"The content and style in an article are inseparable two parts, that is, the content determines the style and the style mirrors and reacts upon the content. Only the content and style are in harmony, the glamour of the literary work can perfectly be shown. This dissertation tended to probe into her literary works' Chinese characteristics from the perspective of its content and style. Her "China novels" had a panoramic view of Chinese characters and China's political and educational system. Specifically speaking, in the first chapter, from the perspective of analyzing Chinese characters, her novels reflected Chinese deep-rooted bad habits, namely, servile personality, male chauvinism, superstition, vanity, onlookers' attitude and etc. While Chinese good traditional spirits were:love of earth, Confucian faithfulness and filialness and etc. In the second chapter, her view on China's political and educational system was analyzed. Buck put forward her suggestions for correcting Chinese deep-rooted bad habits and China's future development way. which was quite thought provoking.Her "China novels" took on unique Chinese features in art form. As for the narration pattern, she adopted Chinese point of view, which is quite different from western writers'westerners'point of view. In the aspect of episode structure, she used Chinese simple style and Chinese story-telling structure, which was different from western novels'complicated structure. The story always stopped without a complete ending so as to depict true life experience and used Chinese romantic way to plot reflecting super natural power and fatalism. With regard to the narration style, the use of "foreignization" in translation of words with Chinese features and moral sermon and the straightforward style of writing can be found in many parts of her novels.Buck in her "China novels" advocated the idea of cultural harmony and the idea of looking things from different perspectives, which surpassed the debate of superiority and inferiority of east and west cultures and bridged the east and west cultures.