A Comparative Study Of Beloved And Big Breasts And Wide Hips From The Perspective Of Ethical Literary Criticism

Ethics is a branch of philosophy which involves good and evil,obligation,moral principle,moral evaluation and moral conduct.And ethical literary criticism belongs to the application of ethics in literature criticism.Synchronically,according to the different backgrounds in which people are placed and different emphasized aspects of their life and activities which people?s relationships involve,the ethic among people can be divided into survival ethic,family ethic,interpersonal ethic,and so on.In view of the fact that the compliance and noncompliance with ethic can find their expressions in both Toni Morrison? Beloved and Mo Yan? Big Breast and Wide Hips,this paper,from three aspects,namely,survival ethic,family ethic,interpersonal ethic,conducts a comparative analysis of the ethical expression between the two novels.This thesis is divided into five chapters:Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction to two writers and the two novels and illustrates the significance of the comparative study based on their similarities in writing style and theme.In Chapter 2,the relative researches on Beloved and Big Breasts and Wide Hips at home and abroad are briefly reviewed here.Chapter 3 introduces the theoretical framework including the relations between ethic and literature,the concept and application of ethical literal criticism.In Chapter 4,the three aspects of ethics in two novels are discussed in details.Firstly,this paper focuses on Sethe?s survival ethical idea “life-supremacy” and Shangguan Lu?s endurance in the suffering for survival.Then,by analyzing Sethe?s infanticide and Shangguan Lu? love affairs,this paper reveals the changes in the expression of the survival ethic of these two characters;secondly,it makes a comparative analysis of disordered family ethic relationships including unhealthy mother-children relationship caused by Beloved?s pre-Oedipus complex and Shangguan Jintong?s Oedipus complex,and the father-children relationship affected by father absence in Beloved and the failed paternity in Big Breasts and Wide Hips.Finally,the author explores the fetters and contradictions between individual and the community in the two novels from the perspective of interpersonal ethic,and embodies the importance of the community to the individual?s self-growth and salvation.Chapter 5 makes a summary about the thesis and also analyzes the limitation and future trend of this research.By the comparative study about ethical issues between the two novels from the perspective of ethical literal criticism,this paper is aimed to interpret the orientations of ethical value of two writers in Beloved and Big Breasts and Wide Hips,namely,two writers emphasize people?s pursuit for the freedom and dignity of life,the importance of harmonious family ethical relationship and enhancing the sense of belonging of individual to community.Moreover,this thesis not only brings the fresh nourishment to the literal research,but it also gives a constructive direction and a deeper level of thinking about the survival and development of people in the contemporary time.