The Community Of Poetic Imagination: Anne Taylor 's Novel Research

Anne Tyler (1941-), the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, is named as "the best realistic writer of our era". In her novels and short stories, Tyler represents the changes in contemporary American society and the problems on American’s self-identification. Focusing on the theme and narrative strategies, the dissertation will argue that Tyler reveals the harmonious relationship between distinctiveness of individuals and unity of community in her literary imagination.Firstly, based on the modern community theory, Tyler’s reflection of the American modern community will be discussed from three perspectives, i.e., religious communities, family communities and geopolitics communities. The dissertation will point out that dilemmas of modern Christianity are how to moderate people’s individuality under the supreme God, and in which way to solve the social problems caused by the collapse of the sanctity of God. Believing in Quakerism, Anne Tyler puts the beliefs of "Inner Light", of Love, of egalitarianism, of liberalism into her religious communities and her characterization. Besides, the language with the features of religious meditation is used in her novels. Secondly, as the main theme of Anne Tyler’s novels, family also represents the change of its structure. Anne Tyler points out that, with surrogate families, traditional American-nuclear-families are losing their dominance, while, even a nuclear family itself might develop into a surrogate family. As the "holon" methodology is practiced in building Tyler’s family communities, conflicts between individuals and their family communities reflected in the model of "sick-for-home and sick-of-home" is eliminated. With portraying the main characters and illustrating their relationships in a family community, Tyler shows her patterns of family communities using fugue narrative strategies. Thirdly, Anne Tyler’s spatial concept is not only confined to the geographic field, but also contains the time and human spirit elements. Take American southern cities as its landscape, Tyler’s "community of place" shows the features as that of the Heterotopia. In addition, the dissertation will illustrate the such spatial concept is reflected on the spatial narrative strategies.Novels, as "the most typical literary imagination" in Richard Rorty’s words, reflect essence of Martin Heidegger’s "Eigentlichkeit". The dissertation will show that Anne Tyler’s novels represent the change of communities in the modern society, and reveal the paradoxical relationship between individualities and their communities. Tyler writes about the journey of people pursuing self-identification and freedom-spirit, pointing out the significance of harmonious human relationship and inter-dependence.