A Parallel Study Of Sherwood A Nderson’s And Lu Hsun’s Community Narratives

Sherwood Anderson is an important American writer who set a legendary revolt in American literature with his nervous breakdown from successful business and impressed readers with a procession of lonely, alienated and inarticulated grotesques in his most famous Winesburg,Ohio. Living in the transitional period from agricultural and handicraft society to industrial society, he exposed the erosion of industrialism and materialism on the soul of human beings in Midwestern town. Lu Hsun is a prominent figure in modern Chinese history. He not only enriched national literature with prolific writings, but also exerted great influence in other areas,like politics and aesthetics. In the social transition from tradition to modernism forced by internal upheaval and foreign aggression, Lu Hsun gave up his original mind of being a doctor and took up his pen to promote social development by criticizing the backward feudal society and the deficiency of nationality. The keen observation and profound reflection of Lu Hsun on the social reality were shown in the characterization of the miserable and frustrated images in Call to Arms and Wandering.At the beginning of 20 th century, Anderson and Lu Hsun both presented the emotional and spiritual circumstances of ordinary people in transitional society in form of short story collections. Similarities in social background, personal experience and textual features make the parallel study of them possible. This paper aims to analyze Winesburg, Ohio of Sherwood Anderson and Call to Arms, Wandering of Lu Hsun from the four basic elements of literary criticism: universe, artist, work and audience. Owe to the consistency of the settings in most of the stories and the co-relation of individual tales, community narrative will be used in the paper to refer to their works respectively in order to show their formal uniqueness.The paper first states the research purpose and framework after a brief introduction of Sherwood Anderson, Lu Hsun and previous studies on them. Then the social and cultural background of the production of the texts and personal experience, ideological changes of the authors will be given. Various conflictions in transitional society and explicit writing intentions of the author are beneficial to understand the content and theme of the community narratives.Close reading of the literary works is the main focus of the paper and it was divided into two parts: analysis of the characters and analysis of the textual structure, writing techniques, which are the third and fourth part of the paper. Grotesque characters in the works will be analyzed to demonstrate the penetrative sensibility and social responsibility of the authors in revealing the misery and depression of the twisted souls in alienated, apathetic transitional society. The panorama of common lives was depicted in self-sufficient and co-related short stories. In simplevernacular language, the authors explored the deep psychology of the characters, used symbolic images to suggest profound meanings and exerted ironic techniques for effective expression,which showed their innovative genius in breaking the confinement of photographic description of realism. But there also exist distinctions in their specific exertion. Generally appraised by readers and critics of different times, the community narratives of Sherwood Anderson and Lu Hsun stand the test of time. With profundity in context, complexity in structure and avant-garde writing techniques, Anderson and Lu Hsun motivated the literary transition from realism to modernism. Their literary practice enrich national literature in form and content, provide opportunities for the mutual understanding of nations with divergent culture and offer suggestive directions for the long-lasting development of serious literature. The particularities of their community narratives in content and form also account for the complementary relations of literary text and literary theory. The main content of the paper is summarized in the last conclusion part.