The Depiction Of Cities In Pai Hsien-yung's Novels And Its Cultural Connotation

Pai Hsien-yung is an important writer in the history of Chinese contemporary literature,and also a contemporary Taiwan writer that readers in mainland China came into contact with,got familiar with and liked in the earliest.In the novels written by Pai Hsien-yung,almost all the cities where he once lived were mentioned.The depiction of those cities has delicate correlation with Pai Hsien-yung's experiences.The city images with different styles truly express the author's deep reflection and exploration of culture,life and destiny.Except the introduction and conclusion,this thesis is composed of four parts.In the first chapter,based on Pai Hsien-yung's depiction of different city images and different emotions contained in the depiction,cities in Pai Hsien-yung's works are classified into two types: native cities and alien cities.These two city types both have several representative cities,such as Guilin,Shanghai and Nanjing for the former type;Hong Kong,Taipei,Chicago and New York for the latter type.Through exploring into Pai Hsien-yung's emotions towards each city,the author studies the experiences of characters in Pai Hsien-yung's typical works in those cities to have a better understanding of the city images shaped in the novels.Based on overall expression of the characteristics of each city,in the second chapter,the cultural connotations in the depiction of cities are researched.In the first section,it is pointed out that compassion feeling is a foothold Pai Hsien-yung's depiction of cities;in the second section,the author discusses the influences of existentialism on Pai Hsien-yung's depiction and settings of cities and characters living in those cities.The third chapter aims to discover the peculiarity of Pai Hsienyung's depiction of cities.Taipei is selected as an example.Through detailed and careful depiction of Taipei,the dynamic process of the Pai Hsien-yung's identification of Taipei is analyzed.In the last chapter,the root source of Pai Hsienyung's depiction of cities is analyzed from four aspects.According to the differences in the depiction of a same city between the previous depictions since the new century,the transformation from personal feelings towards family and country to the thought of great love all over the world is deeply excavated.