Maugham’s Western-Centrism Construction Of Chinese Image

As a British writer,William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)enjoys a worldwide reputation in the twentieth century.He has created numerous novels and plays of significant achievements during his life.He spent most of his life traveling for seeking materials and inspiration for his works,so his footprints have come to the Far East countries.The most attractive things in his works are full of exotic.Since his first novel Liza of Lambeth has published,Maugham’s writing career has begun. Whether short stories, novels or plays,they all bring to Maugham steady stream of rising wealth and fame.This thesis based on close reading will interpret Maugham’s Chinese theme works,such as On a Chinese Screen,Of Human Bondage and The Painted Veil and so on.This thesis gives deep analysis of the reasons how the Chinese image is produced in western cultural context,and reveals Western writers’creative motivation and psychological mechanism.The Chinese image performed by Maugham in his works is a paradox.On the one hand,with a small portion Maugham expressed his yearning for ancient China, regarded the ancient China as an ideal paradise where is full of antiquity and exquisite artworks.On the other hand, Maugham showed more poverty and backwardness of China,created a negative China with a stagnant society and numb Chinese people.This thesis consists of three parts:introduction,body(three chapters,six sections) and conclusion.The introduction outlines the creation of Maugham’s work on exotic theme,present situation of Chinese scholars on Maugham and research methods and significance of the topic of this paper.Based on imagology,the first chapter makes a sorting of the two opposite image of China (utopia and demonized) shaped by Maugham,and tries to point out the causes of these two extreme images.The second chapter points out Maugham’s writing of Chinese culture is fragmented and inaccurate,and analysis what behind this phenomenon is a western writer’s condescending gaze of the East,and reveals the unbalanced relationship between the gazing of the subject and object.The third chapter from the perspective of the social collective imagination points out that Maugham’s writing of China did not jump out of the circle of collective imagination.The conclusion is a summary of this thesis,and concludes that by interpreting the biased image of China shaped by Maugham,we should think about how different cultures can have an equal exchange.