The Study On The Cosmopolitan Spirit Of The Alchemist

Famous Brazilian contemporary writer Paulo Coelho has the largest readership and the most powerful influential after the Marquez in Latin America. His masterpiece The Alchemist contains a kind of universal human care’s cosmopolitan spirit: full of concerns about the survival of the state and the individual destiny of mankind; A kind of multi-cultural identity’s cosmopolitan spirit: religious equality and a kind of transcend nation and area’s cosmopolitan spirit: love. Thus, The Alchemist produces a fairly extensive and a profound impact in the world. The thesis starts from ethical and literary practice of cosmopolitanism, interpreting and elaborating the cosmopolitan spirit of The Alchemist.This is composed of six parts. The first part introduces and combs systematically the existing research on Paulo Coelho and his works, so as to find out the perspective of this thesis. The Second part combined the three elements theory of H. A. Taine’s “Ethnicity, Environment, Era”, thesis mainly following three aspects, “Ethnicity ”-- ethnic melting pot of Brazil”; “Environment”-- multi-faith country, dictatorship and writer’s legendary experience and “Era”-- cultural globalization, in order to analyze the causes of cosmopolitan spirit. The third part mainly uses the individualism theory of Appiah, combined with Paulo Coelho’s life experiences, in full compliance with the cosmopolitanism “The individual as a starting point and build on individual consciousness and practice”, is a “self-cultivation and actions”. Through in-depth analysis of the fiction, which full of symbolic people, objects and stories, to interpret the universal human care cosmopolitan spirit behind them. The Forth part, based on the universalism theory of Appiah and Wang Ning on multicultural identity construct of cosmopolitanism, the thesis interprets the pure love of San Diego and Fatima. In the fiction, this plot which is rich symbolism means Christianity and Islam are in full equality. Whereby, the author believes every religion in the world is identical and equal in essence. Different religious beliefs should not be a cause of estrangement between the people. In the fifth part, by probing into “All is one thing” and “World soul” in the fiction, we can sure they are not only reflected the essence of love but also the core of the fiction. As Paulo Coelho has stressed in life: Love is the source of everything. The love beyond the nation and area reflected in the fiction, powerfully demonstrates cosmopolitan spirit of Paulo Coelho. The last part summarizes the whole text. What’s more, the writer places The Alchemist under the broad world literature background to evaluate it. The thesis further considers that even if Paulo Coelho’s cosmopolitan spirit based on the premise of optimism and idealized, the “Personal Legends” in the fiction which are highly recommended is not pointing to an ultimate destination, it refers to a way of walking--What’s Paulo Coelho tried to show is how far humans can go and where can we reach in this manner.