Landscape And National Identity Construction In Of Time And The River

Thomas Clayton Wolfe(1900-1938)is a famous novelist of the United States in the 1930 s.Of Time and the River is a sequel to his famous work Look Homeward,Angel,which was translated into Chinese in 2011.There are a mass of descriptions of landscapes in Of Time and the River,showing Wolfe's deep sense of landscape.All landscape symbols constitute a “text” for reading,reflecting the protagonist,Eugene's construction process of national identity.Based on the theory of New Cultural Geography,this paper focuses on the rural,urban,modern transportation and transnational landscapes encountered in Eugene's journey,which can be divided into three parts according to the logic of “origin-confusion-reconstruction” of identity.The second chapter,“The Vast Rural Landscape: the Origin of American Memory and Identity”,expounds the basic role of rural landscapes played in the construction of Eugene's national identity.The United States originated from the wilderness,so behind the wilderness landscape and the rural landscape,are the United States' founding history and original memory,which shows an elegant cultured country rose from the deserted wilderness naturally.The earth,rivers,mountains and rocks,as well as cemeteries are immortal,thus on the one hand,the wilderness has become a symbol of the immortality and the revival of the American nation.On the other hand,however,conservation of these rural landscapes also forces Eugene to produce a feeling of identity anxiety,thus he leaves his birthplace to search for a new one.The third chapter,“The Fickle Urban Landscape: Identity Confusion in the Industrial Transformation Period”,analyzes Eugene's alienation and confusion after facing the complicated and transformed urban landscape.Dissatisfied with the hustle and bustle of his hometown,Eugene comes to a big city for the first time.Under the stimulation of strong senses coming from the bustling and crowded streets,luxury or run-down houses,bars of lost people,Eugene is confused by the dual urban landscape,and two aspects of his national identity,including the villagers' identity and citizenship begin to collide and merge with each other.Chapter four,“Modern Transportation and Transnational Landscape: Identity Reconstruction in the Booming America” represents both the modern transportation landscapes which symbolize the rapidly developing United States,and Eugene's construction of national identity realizing through the European transnational landscapes.Trains and railways,ships and the sea play important roles in Eugene'sjourney.The unhappy journey in Europe leads Eugene to seek the “impressible”homeland landscape.Under the reference of the foreign countries which known as “the other”,Eugene finally completes the reshaping of the definition of “self” and the national identity.Identity is not a simple binary opposition between “one or the other”,but rather something that can be integrated to achieve diversification and enrichment.From the wilderness,the countryside,the city,to the relations with overseas countries,Eugene's journey is a review of Americas developing history.Through Eugene's reconstructing experience of cultural identity,the novel shows America's construction process of modern national identity.