An Intertextual Analysis Of Chinese-american Novels

Literature and history are closely connected, and Chinese-American literature is a history of the survival and development history of Chinese Americans. In recent years, the domestic research has witnessed a great improvement both horizontally and vertically. The past researches mainly cover the cultural identity, marginalization, historicity, and the intertextuality with Chinese traditions and culture.The theory of intertextuality, firstly promoted by French post-structualist Julia Kristeva under the influence of Mikhail Bakhtin, believes that texts are all involved into a mutual influence instead of existing solely. Intertextuality is applied widely in Chinese-American novels. Mainly as the second generation of the immigrants, Chinese-American writers have a close relationship with the traditional culture and history of China. And in the environment of the combination of two cultures, they tend to use intertextuality to create their works. With the development of Chinese-American literature, the contents and themes of these novels are also expanding.This thesis takes three Chinese-American novels written by three different writers, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl, and Sarah Shun-lien Bynum’s Madeleine is Sleeping, as examples to analyze the intertextuality revealed in the novels, and tries to explore the developing trend of Chinese-American novels by making analysis of the intertextual phenomena and the themes.In structure, besides introduction and conclusion, this thesis consists of four chapters.Introduction gives a brief introduction of three authors and three novels, a literature review on intertextuality and Chinese-American literature, introduces the theory of intertextuality,states the reason of choosing these three novels as research subjects and the research method in this thesis.Chapter One makes an intertextual analysis of Kingston’s novel The Woman Warrior. There are a lot of Chinese traditional and cultural elements in the novel, such as gender discrimination, Chinese Kung Fu, Mu Lan Ballad, the story of Yue Fei, Ts’ ai Yen, and Chinese superstitions etc.. And this chapter discusses the close intertextual connection with Chinese culture in the novel.Chapter Two analyzes Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl. The story is with scientific fantasies. It has richer subjects such as machinery mass production and cloning technology in the future and less Chinese traditional and cultural elements. This chapter analyzes the intertextuality between the two sub-texts in the novel, Chinese cultural elements, and the scientific and technologic materials to reveal a less connection with Chinese culture in this Chinese-American novel and a richer subjects and themes in it.Chapter Three explores Sarah Bynum’s Madeleine is Sleeping. The novel criticizes the oppression made by culture system toward human kind through the parody of fairy tales about Madeline and sleeping beauty. The novel seems to have little connection with Chinese culture, but the focus on marginal subject shows a resonance with Chinese-Americans to a broader extent. The analysis of the intertextuality in the novel reveals author’s parting away from Chinese traditions and culture to involve richer and more diverse theme in the novel.On the ground of the analyses above, Chapter Four explains the inner connection and the contribution of these three novels.And at last, the thesis draws a conclusion. The intertextual phenomena in these three novels show a less and less connection with Chinese tradition and culture, and have richer and richer subjects with other elements. And the more and more penetrating and critical themes of these three novels show a developing tendency of Chinese-American novels.