The Western View Of Oriental Complex

During the latest century, the Chinese theme works in American literature have been springing out and gaining more and more attention, among which are not only the exotic imaginary writing by western writers, but also the Chinese immigrant writers’ hometown-review as well as ethnic Chinese writers’homeland traceable writing. Compared with the former literary studies and criticism on the works by Chinese-American writers, the cultural nationality and ethnic political analysis occupy the dominant position of the studies while the analysis of other literary elements is not enough. Therefore, this study sets out to explore the characteristics of Chinese-American literary works from the1990s by analyzing the works of Lisa See on behalf of the Chinese-American writers.Lisa See (1955—) is more active in recent years as a Chinese-American writer living in Los Angeles. Lisa See’s work, yet still could not get rid of the set pattern of highlighting oriental flavor to attract the eye balls, but her work connotation has shifted the focus from writing on simple homeland tracing and identity authentication to exploring the characters’ spiritual world and emotional world, with strong features of feminist writing at the same time. Thanks to these, the Orient in her works has becoming an exotic stage from a blunt symbol which has to be displayed.By classification method to analyze Lisa See’s two representative books Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2005) and Shanghai Girls (2009), this thesis is mainly to explore the oriental culture from the perspective of Westerners as well as study the influence of Chinese-American literary works of this period on the construction and deconstruction of Orientalism through the features and changes of Lisa’s writing. This thesis consists of three chapters.Chapter1is an introductory chapter, introducing the main reasons why Chinese-American literary works are China-centered. Due to the cultural differences between the East and West, the Westerners have had a strong sense of curiosity and exploration for China all along. The centuries-old Chinese culture, having lasting influence on the Chinese-American writers, is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for them. Moreover, it makes a brief analysis of their writing background and current situation of Chinese-American writers since the1990s.Chapter2offers an object analysis. Through the study of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2005) and Shanghai Girls (2009), this part presents comprehensive description of Lisa’s "China Complex" and implied Orientalism color from the perspective of Westerners. Besides, the author also studies the influence of Chinese-American literary works in1990s on the construction and deconstruction of Orientalism according to the new changes in Chinese-American literary writing along with the time changes.Chapter3is the conclusion of the thesis. After the above comparative analysis, it is concluded that the features of Lisa’s works have reflected the Chinese-American writers’ maturity during their process of culture introspect and spirit quest. The Oriental symbols are gradually weakened and the graphic description of characters’spiritual and emotional world is particularly emphasized. The literary meaning of Lisa’s works has gradually replaced the simple ethnic writing or identity authentication, tending to the writing of emotional novels.