Construction Of Traumatic Narrative For The Colonized

When considering literature for modem world,Gabriel Garcia Marquez and James Joyce are two masters that can never be neglected.Both authors share the national background of colonized histories,which often lead to colonized traumas and all sorts of decolonizational struggles.Since language is the embodiment of ideology,the construction of traumatic narrative by the colonized themselves can shed light to their colonial traumas,and give them courage to confront the traumas and the history.This thesis aims at analyzing the construction of traumatic narrative for both Marquez and Joyce through the comparison between their short stories.In the perspective of similarity,both Marquez and Joyce foreground the paralysis of the colonized,decentralize the ideology of suzerain Language and construct their own traumatic narrative.While due to the different colonial.patterns of Latin America and Ireland and the different theoretical trends of both authors' contemporary era,Marquez emphasizes on the split subjectivity of the colonized through his employment of supernatural elements in Magical Realism,and Joyce exposes the spiritual crisis of Irish with his usage of interior monologue in Stream of Consciousness.This thesis mainly consists of five chapters.The first chapter gives a brief introduction of two masters and their works,the current literature review,and the purpose,significance and method of this thesis.The second chapter analyzes the similarity of both authors' construction of traumatic narratives in the perspective of post-colonial leitmotifs and textual strategies.Through the employment of decentralization,allusion and realistic presentation,Marquez and Joyce emphasize on the dysfunction of love,politics and religion,and these dysfunctions further expose the overall paralysis of the colonized.The third chapter puts the emphasis on the differences.Marquez uses the supernatural elements in Magical Realism to construct the split subjectivity in his narratives while Joyce uses interior monologue to reveal Irish spiritual crisis hiding behind their nostalgia.The fourth chapter shows an integrated analysis of the reasons for such similarities and differences.The similar colonial traumas make both Marquez and Joyce emphasize on the paralysis of the colonized.The different colonial patterns and theoretical trends gives Marquez and Joyce uniqueness of their narratives.The last chapter is the conclusion part.Through the comparison of both post-colonial leitmotifs and textual strategies,Joyce and Marquez construct their own traumatic narrative and confront for their own histories.