A Study Of Somaesthetics Criticism On Carson McCullers’s Misshapen Narration

Carson Mc Cullers is one of the representative writers in the South of the United States in the 20 th century.The life in a remote town in the Southern United States is the main background of her works,and the pessimistic life experience of loneliness and boredom is the main content of her works.As a result of her disability,Mc Cullers developed a curiosity and sympathy for the lives of marginalized people in the South,such as disabled people and queer people.For the conservative southern society,she tried to break through the dilemma with freedom;She also faithfully recorded the violence and carnage,so that there was no escape from the evil reality.Therefore,the brilliance of humanitarian ideals can be found in the writer’s works.The fresh body is the material carrier that records the guilty and hope of the south,and also the direct manifestation of the misshapen narration of the writer.This paper takes Mc Cullers’ five novels as the research object,and analyzes the reality of southern society reflected by her deformity and ugly body in her works.In addition,the author focuses on the bizarre,horrible and backward living reality of the South.It reveals the predicament of conservative backwardness in the south,as well as the social problems such as the tension of social relations and the collapse of faith.And,this study take the Richard Schuster’s Somaesthetics theory as the main basis,with Foucault’s power discourse,feminist criticism of Beauvior as reference,from the three aspects of body existence and perception,body damage and repair,body relationship and oppression to interpret Mc Cullers’ creation features of loving peace and taking ugliness as beauty.The first chapter introduces Schusterman’s Somaesthetics and analyzes the relationship between Somaesthetics and Mc Cullers’ body misshapen narration in her novels.Schusterman believes that the body should not become a battlefield of binary opposition.He advocates the cultivation of embodied body concept and the establishment of harmonious relationship between human,society and nature with sensitive body perception ability.But in Mc Cullers’ work,the body is subjected to brutal persecution and suspicion.The writer is very indignant about the injury and violence of body,and expresses her pursuit of harmony and freedom through the body discourse of disability.The second chapter is the image analysis of the physically disabled people in Mc Cullers’ works.In southern society,the gender-ambiguous queer community has the characteristics of androgyny.The author believes that these rebellious queer people have broken away from the traditional definition of gender and begun to attack the patriarchal society.But queer people are also vulnerable in the South,derided and threatened with imprisonment.What’s more,the south’s apocalyptic vision caught the attention of conservatives.They despaired over the collapse of the South,while suffering from illness,and launched a wave of racist discrimination.The third chapter discusses the artistic technique of misshapen narration in Mc Cullers’ s works.The artistic techniques used by writers are diverse.She used grotesque and terrible Gothic style to exaggerate the harm suffered by body.At the same time,the writer uses the symbolic technique of fantasy to establish the interactive space inside and outside the body to express the confinement and struggle of the body.In addition,the writer shows the life attitude of the disabled in a way of black humor,like satire and contradiction.She found the pain of survival and the kindness covered up in hideous and ridiculous body.The fourth chapter summarizes the value of misshapen narration in Mc Cullers’ s works.Through her misshapen narrative discourse,she created a tired and distorted body tragedy,showing the sublime beauty of destruction.Moreover,the writer’s attention to the body also has practical warning significance.She called on people to cultivate a harmonious body concept and establish a healthy body relationship.People should dare to break through stereotypes,pursue physical freedom and happiness,and jointly establish a new South and a new society that accepts differences and tolerates symbiosis.Moreover,the body is also the participant and witness of historical activities.Mc Cullers’ misshapen narrative recalls the collective trauma of southern society and criticizes the scapegoat tradition of exclusion.From the perspective of history as a mirror,she left profound thoughts on how to ensure unity and fight against the epidemic in the current era.