A Reception Study On The Phenomenon Of Lin Yutang

This article aims to reveal the cultural background of the American society in1930s and1940s. Under the guidance of aesthetic theory, the author retrospect the reason why Lin Yutang’s English version of literature work gained the recognition of world, and meanwhile, treating Lin Yutang himself as an objective cultural symbols, the paper tries to break through the existing research framework, examine, and reveal the specific steps by which Lin Yutang’s "speech" was chosen to be acceptable in the west. Before Mr. Lin Yutang, the Western missionaries and the Pearl S. Buck’s "Chinese image" have a profound impact on the collective imagination of Western society, Lin Yutang’s predecessors, Gu Hongming set off an unusual "Chinese phenomenon" in Europe, especially in Germany. By comparing these "chinese speeches" caused by the effects, I try to present a dynamic picture of the acceptance of Lin Yutang’s literature works in the cross-cultural communication and their universality and uniqueness. With Lin Yutang’s conscious business operations, a more Western way of Chinese discourse was born and gained the rave reviews in the United States while it suffered a lot of criticism in China. Lin Yutang’ influence in the United States continue to be deepened, and become a Western society’s carrier of collective imagination of China. And then evolved into a "cultural symbol " used by Western cultural forces.Today, our cultural workers still have to face similar problems like Lin Yutang’s in the1930s. Being faced with a strong culture of the west, they desire to express the complete self and avoid falling into the dilemma of self-alienation. Therefore, this article attempts to evaluate Lin Yutang’s English works from an objective point of view reflect on his influence in the process of cultural exchange, which was constrained by the target reader’s horizon of expectations, and reveals the cultural forces behind the use of a social phenomenon.The author intends to provide some reference to today’s cross-cultural communication.