A Comparative Study Of Pu Songling Mo Yan

Pu Songling is a master of the ancient classical Chinese fiction. Mo Yan is afamous Chinese contemporary writer and Nobel Literature Prize winner. Both Pu andMo were born and grew in the ancient Qi. Their creations are subject to the samegeographical and culture and show some similarities or similar characteristics. At thesame time, because of the different life experiences and times，their creations exhibitdifferent characteristics. This dissertation will explore the similarities and differencesof the two great literary writers from different perspectives with five chapters.The introduction consists of three parts, mainly concerned in discussing theorigin of the subject, current researches both at home and abroad, research methodsand research significances, and so on.Chapter one is divided into four sections, comparing the two writers’ lifeexperiences. Section one surveys the similarities and differences of the two writers,Pu Songling’s and Mo Yan’s times and educational backgrounds. Section twodiscusses their lonely upbringing experiences. Section three exposes Pu’s and Mo’sartistic growth. It is Pu Songling’s frustration by the imperial examination all his lifeand Mo Yan’s loneliness and traumatic experiences in his childhood that respectivelyhas a significant impact. They are sublimated in miseries and become attached toliterature. Section four describes that writers’personalities affect their creations.Chapter two analyses that Pu Songling and Mo Yan’s creations are influenced byQi culture, Lu culture and folk culture. Originally speaking, they are both surroundedwith Qi culture, but their writing is also affected by Confucian culture among Luculture. At the same time, they revolt and outdistance Confucian culture. Moreover,Pu Songling is affected by Zichuan culture and Mo Yan by Gaomi culture.Chapter three analyses the eternal themes of literature, discussing on the aspectsof love, family, death and critique of reality. There are differences during thesimilarities when Pu Songling and Mo Yan deal with these literary motifs.Chapter four takes two groups of characters for contrastive analysis of Pu Songling and Mo Yan’s writings. They are female and children images. Thesimilarities and differences of these characters are analyzed in detail and the reasonsfor such portrayal are explored in such aspects as the writers’ ideology, psychologyand culture.Chapter five discusses Pu Songling’s and Mo Yan’s creation features, diggingtheir commonalities and analyzing their diversities from the perspectives of materialsdrawing, languages, poetry and imaginativeness.The conclusion gives a summary of the issues that have been discussed in theprevious parts and stresses the major point, namely, Mo Yan learns and innvotes fromPu Songling from a creative inheritance point of view. Both Pu Songling and Mo Yanare influenced by ancient Qi culture. And apparently, as the founder of grandfather ofMo Yan, Pu Songling himself also has an important impact on Mo Yan.The major innovations of the thesis are the following: The researches on PuSongling or Mo Yan have been carried out quite thoroughly both at home and abroadand made great achievements. However, it is still almost blank in the area of thecomparative study between the two writers, especially lacking in Mo Yan’sinheritance from Pu Songling and the cultural inseparability. There are only fragmentsor informative texts show their “comparability”. Therefore, this dissertation willsystematically and thoroughly make a comparative study between the two outstandingwriters’ similarities and differences of their language styles, theme sources, creativeprocesses, upbringing experiences, characterization and the historical and culturalorigins of production features, etc., trying to expand the academic territory andresearching space of Pu Songling’s and Mo Yan’s study.