Image Of Chinatown In Frank Norris’s Works

Since the19th century, American writers published a large number of novels about Chinese. Frank Norris was a good example.Frank Norris was an important American writer in later-19th century and early-20th century. He was the forerunner of American naturalism. In his Moran of the Lady Letty.A Story of Adventure off the California Coast(1898A Blix(1899) Mcteague:A Story of San Francisco(1897), Norris has constructed a Chinatown from four levels. It had a profound impact in china’s image in American literature after him.This article will analyze "Chinatown "novels by frank Norris from the angle of view of imagologie,and learn from Edward.w.said’s orientalism, in order to approach the construction of this Chinatown image and find out social, historical reasons.This thesis consists of four parts:The first chapter is the introduction, including the presentation of the question, what have been investigated about the question at home and aboard and research method. Chapter II "frank Norris and his Chinatown novels" will introduce frank Norris’s life and his educational backgrounds、composition experiences and influence for later writers. It’s aiming at promoting domestic readers’comprehensive and coherent understanding of this novelist. Chapter III "designation of Chinatown’s image in frank Norris’s novels" will analyze specifically the designation of "Chinatown" created in Norris’s novels. It includes objects, character, and custom, social structure levels. The objects level which includes architectural; the character level, including the shape and character; the custom level, including Feng Shui and funeral; the social structure references to the Gang. Chapter Ⅳ"various reasons of the formation of frank Norris’s Chinatown and reflection "will from horizontal and vertical dimensions,analyze the reasons of the formation of Chinatown in frank Norris’s novels. The horizontal dimension refers to from the newspaper&magazines’report about Chinese in19th century, find reasons about the social and economic aspects of a particular historical period; the vertical dimension refers to exploring tradition of shaping china image in western literature and its development.The writer thinks that the image of Chinatown, not only a true portrayal of Chinese community in American society, but also mixed with the personally misreading of Chinese world and imaginary by Norris. Without a doubt, the phenomenon occurs because of the breadth of Chinese culture and the Sino-us differences, but the deeper reasons are social and historical. Additionally, this paper was also thinking about the significance of the study on the negative image of china and the "self-orientalization". On the one hand, we can understand ourselves through the eyes of westerns; on the other hand, we can understand the desire and fear and so on of those who were image-building, to promote intercultural exchange and interaction, and help us build an equal relationship between Chinese and western.