本文是一篇文学论文，文学是属于人文学科的学科分类之一，与哲学、宗教、法律、政治并驾于社会建筑上层。它起源于人类的思维活动。最先出现的是口头文学，一般是与音乐联结为可以演唱的抒情诗歌。（以上内容来自百度百科）今天为大家推荐一篇文学论文，供大家参考。
Introduction
The year 2016 marks the fortieth anniversary of The Woman Warrior: Memoirsof a Girlhood Among Ghosts, “the first classic of Asian American literature” (Grice,2006:128) by Maxine Hong Kingston (1940- ), one of the most influential ChineseAmerican writers. “With one book, Asian American writing entered the mainstream,appealing simultaneously to the general reader and the scholarly community…”(Huntley 2001:76), and Kingston became the first Asian American writer to beaccepted in the canon of American literature in the late 1970s. Paul Skenazy and TeraMartin (1998) have commented on the impact of WW as “the most anthologized ofany living American author” (Skenazy vii), which has been verified later by theModern Language Association in indentifying WW as “perhaps the most frequentlyassigned twentieth-century literary text by a living author” (Huntley 2001:76). For thepast decades or so, the book has been read, discussed and criticized all across “a widespectrum of academic disciplines” (ibid).
Kingston’s influence on contemporary Asian American literature ismonumental as the phenomenal publication of The Woman Warrior in 1976announced a critical point in the ongoing development of American literary tradition.Kingston “opened the door for a generation of Asian American writers and critics inmainstream American literary criticism” (Lin, 2007: 9), and she has become the“Muse”, the “guardian angel” (ibid) in Asian American writing today. Almost everypublication on the subject of Asian American literature in general contains “either anevocation of her name or a reference to her pioneering work” (ibid). Her three“exemplary books”, namely The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood AmongGhosts (1976), China Men (1980), and Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (1989)have mapped out the major themes and directions for a generation of Asian Americanwriters. As Lin Jian (Jennie Wang) said, it was Kingston “who nourished the spirit ofwhat critics called a ‘renaissance’ of Asian American literature” (2007: 9). In 1997,the former American President Clinton spoke of Kingston’s achievements at thereception of Presidential Humanities Medal: “She brought the Asian Americanexperience to life for millions of readers and inspired a new generation of writers tomake their own unique voices and experiences heard” (qtd. in Lin “Introduction”: 9).
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1. Maxine Hong Kingston’s Literary Achievements
As a leading Asian American writer and also a major American writer, Kingstonhas been highly accomplished both literarily and socially. Up till now, Kingston’spublished works include The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts(1976), Hawaii One Summer (1978), China Men (1980), Through the Black Curtain(1987), Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (1989), To Be the Poet (2002), The FifthBook of Peace (2003), Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace (2007) and I Love a BroadMargin to My Life (2011). Critics (Grice, 2006:127; Liu in Yang, 2009: iii) tend todivide these works into two periods: the first or early period including WW, CM andTM—Kingston’s most studied works, and the second or latter period from the late1990s and early 2000s to the present time, from which Kingston’s “major redirection”turns towards “an engagement with a politics of pacifism and ecofeminism” (Grice,2006: 128).To evaluate Maxine Hong Kingston in terms of literary achievements, fouraspects have to be mapped out as they have determined the author’s writing throughnearly half a century. They are the age of American 1960s, the life of “domesticdiaspora” in Hawaii, the ties with China, and the debate with Frank Chin.
Kingston’s life experience and writing career have coincided with the socialchanges in the second half of the twentieth-century America, with “her politicalconcerns and legacies” (Grice, 2006:128) made manifest in works. She was born toChinese immigrant parents and grew up in Stockton, California with talents in writingat very early age. In 1958, she attended the University of California at Berkeley withfull scholarships beginning as engineering major but later changing to English major.She graduated with a B.A. in English in 1962 and married Earll Kingston, an actor.She once called herself “the daughter of the 1960s” (Chin, 1989). While on Berkeleycampus, Kingston had been active in the culture of the 1960s—“aligning herself withthe Free Speech movement, joining in protests against war in Vietnam, and directingher energies toward activism through which she and other like-minded students hopedto make a difference” (Huntley, 2001:8). Like millions of young people in that“freewheeling decade” (ibid), Kingston also “experimented with drugs” (ibid); andthis experience had “inspired and shaped” (ibid) her third book Tripmaster Monkey.The couple was “active in anti-Vietnam war protests and in the Free Speechmovement” (Huntley, 2001:9). In 1967, in the midst of Berkeley’s political uprisingsand student protests against the Vietnam War, the Kingstons left for Hawaii in order toescape “the disturbingly burgeoning drug culture and the increasingly violent antiwarmovement” (ibid), though in reality they had not escaped the Vietnam War and thedraft. Kingston recalled this experience in Hawaii One Summer (1978): “…we hadnot, of course, escaped from the war, but had put ourselves in the very midst of it, asclose as you can get and remain in the United States” (“War”, HOS, 16; qtd. in Grice,2006:96).
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Chapter Two Literary Mutualism Through Intertextuality in China Men........51
2.1 Kwan Kung Image as Protector of Chinese Culture..........51
2.2 Robinson Crusoe Image as Contributor to America...........54
2.3 Claiming America for Chinese Americans of a Collective Being........59
Chapter Three Literary Parasitism Through Parody in Tripmaster Monkey.............61
3.1 Americanized Monkey: Parodying Monkey King.............62
3.2 Chinese Beatnik: Parodying “Beat Generation”.......65
3.3 Modern Bloom: Parodying Leopold Bloom.....70
Chapter ThreeLiterary Parasitism Through Parody inTripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book
As the “Novel of the Sixties”, TM recreates the spirits and cultural landscapesof the 1960s—defying the authorities, breaking down the classes and hierarchies, andpursuing self-values. At the center of the story is Wittman Ah Sing, a Californianative in his early twenties, “an alienated and intelligent antihero at odds with thesociety in which he has been raised and educated” (Huntley, 2001:162). As arepresentative of the new generation of Chinese Americans, he is “both product andproducer of a world in which change is the only constant, impermanence a way of life,and multiplicity and multivocality are cultural givens” (Huntley, 2001:181). Moreimportantly, this book is the spiritual journey of a Chinese American youth who takesa serious interest in literature. It is Kingston’s continual exploration of thedevelopment of Chinese American youth.
3. 1 Americanized Monkey: Parodying Monkey King
As critic Leonard points out, TM is “an encyclopedic postmodern narrative thatreferences, embraces, and absorbs a dizzying variety of sources from all cultures anderas” (1989:768) Kingston borrows heavily from a variety of works, China or West,classical or modern. The most obvious is nothing more than the parallel relationshipto Journey to the West (also translated as The Story of the Monkey), asixteenth-century Chinese novel. The correspondence between TM and Journey to theWest is not just a simple parody, but also an independent text of their own. The parodyof Journey to the West confirms the presence of the latter on the one hand, and theirinheritance on the other.Wittman Ah Sing, the protagonist of Tripmaster Monkey, had spent over amonth realizing his dream to build a democratic community which was establishedfrom the rebuilding of the Chinese American theatre. Wittman once announces that “Iam really: the present-day U.S.A. incarnation of the King of the Monkeys” (TM 33).In other words, he is the “Americanized Monkey.”
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Conclusion
Representing the “biggest achievements of Asian American literature” (YanYan,2006:118), The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts, ChinaMen and Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book have ranked Maxine Hong Kingston oneof the greatest writers in twentieth century American literature. Kingston’sinterpretations of Mothers tales and Chinese stories evolve into a process throughwhich she first questions, searches and challenges both of her cultural traditions, andthen clears up confusion, finds her roots, reconciles herself to her ancestors, uses herChinese heritage to channel the understanding of the East and West, and finallyachieves “a wholeness out of the splinters of two cultures” (Yan,1996:149). Themodel of Fa Mu Lan as the woman warrior that Kingston initially questions laterultimately inspires her both in life and in writing. Though confused by Mothers stories,Kingston finally inherits her story-telling skill. By searching for her Americanancestors, Kingston has found her national roots and assuredly claims America as hercountry. Setting up Kwan Kung as the grandfather or the spiritual instructor forChinese Americans, Kingston is able to break the stereotype of Chinese Americansand build up a heroic tradition for Chinese Americans. Kingston’s transformation ofthe outcast Robinson Crusoe into a Chinese American founding father Lo Bun Sun iseven more significant in that by doing so she has created a collective history forChinese Americans, a history symbolized by those Lo Bun Suns “who create a newworld with their hands.” Besides, the metamorphosis of Western stories into ChineseAmerican tales help to make familiar things new and new things familiar to both theEastern and Western readers. As for Wittman Ah Sing, he is not only a biculturalcharacter dreaming his Utopian kingdom of “the Pearl Garden in the West”; as apostmodern antihero, he does become the symbolic figure representing the modernmen who are in utmost plight and in unremitting search for the self.#p#分页标题#e#
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References (abbreviated)
