Comparative Study Local Issues In Mo Yan And Xie Weiying’s Works

Vietnam and China have a long-standing cultural relationship.Since the construction of the first feudal state,Vietnam has absorbed the influence of Chinese culture.But the situation has changed since the beginning of the 20th century when both Vietnam and China have been strongly influenced by Western culture,and the Soviet Union.Despite the differences,there are many similarities in terms of history,politics,culture and society of the two countries.Among the aspects of the two countries,the study focuses on comparison in literature,which is a valuable research direction.Mo Yan and Ta Duy Anh are two prominent writers for contemporary Chinese and Vietnamese literature.Both writers have written extensively on rural issues,rural fluctuations in historical periods as well as human destiny.Furthermore,Vietnam and China are two agricultural countries,so the country has become the favourite subject of many writers in both countries and this topic speaks much about the society,people and culture of the two countries.In the age of globalization,comparative research is of great value in understanding others and understanding ourselves.The dissertation on rural issues in the compositions of Mo Yan(China)and Ta Duy Anh(Vietnam)is a study of the similarities and differences in thecontemporary literature of both countries.The dissertation thoroughly uses the comparative method in literature to carry out the study of rural issues in the writings of Mo Yan and Ta Duy Anh.Apart from the introduction,conclusion and appendix,the dissertation includes five chapters:Chapter 1:Introduction to Mo Yan and Ta Duy Anh.Chapter 2:Rural picturewith variation of history in the works of MoYan and Ta Duy Anh;Chapter 3:Peasant imagesin the Works of Mo Yan and Ta Duy Anh;Chapter 4:The Image of Rural Women in the Works of Mo Yan and Ta Duy Anh;Chapter 5:Rural narratives in the work of Mo Yan and Ta Duy Anh.Each chapter will be implemented in detail as follows.Chapter 1 introduced the life,literary career and artistic conceptionof Mo Yan and Ta Duy Anh.The purpose of this chapter is to provide the reader with an overview of the two writers.Learning about life aims to note what has influenced the writings of two writers.The purpose of introducing creative careers is to determine the capacity,expertise,influence and dedication of each writer to the history of literature.The concept of art is to see the general and specific characteristics of the two writers’ artistic ideas,and to see the influence of artistic view on their works.Both two writers have spent a long time in life being attached to the countryside so they have much rural experience.The writing career of Mo Yan and Ta Duy Anh are rich,composed of both novels and short stories.However,the quantity,the scale and the international influence of novel genresby Mo Yan arefar more massive and superior than ones by Ta Duy Anh.Both writers have profound views on the work of writing,the role of the writer as well as other issues of literature.This shows that two writers are deeply aware of their works.Additionally,the dissertation dedicates a section about the receipt of Mo Yan in Vietnam.The purpose of this part is to increase the persuasiveness of the selected topic,which is the basis for conducting comparative studies.Chapter 2 concentrated on the rural overview with historical change in the works of two writers,which means the study on the transformation of the countryside under the great influence of major political,social and historical events on the change of the relationship between the characters.In this respect,the two writers have much in common in reproducing the historical alteration of the two countries and its footprint in the rural life.In the 1940s,Vietnam and China overthrew the feudal regime,building a new government,conducting land reform,building socialism,and later taking the open door policy.In the period of land reform,both countries made regrettable mistakes,casting a shadow on rural life.In the open door policy and reform period with a market economy,rural areas of the two countries faced the risk of morality declinewith the attractiveness of money.However,there are some differences between the two countries.A typical example is thatViet Nam neither experienced a mortal civil war before the establishment of the new governmentnorwitnessedthe great Cultural Revolution after the establishment of the new government as China did.By contrast,after the establishment of the new government,China did not have to endure long-standing resistance against foreign aggression as Vietnam did.Mo Yandid not seem to ignore any historical upheavals in his writings,while Ta Duy Anh just paid attention to the mark of the land revolution for rural life.Thus,the relationship between the characters of Mo Yanis more complex and placed in a wider social environment while Ta Duy Anh’s compositions are primarily concerned with family animosity.As a result,the volume,the number and the size of Mo Yan’s works is more massive than ones by Ta Duy Anh.Chapter 3 focused on images of the famers in Mo Yan and Ta Duy Anh’s work.Both writers paid attention to lives of poverty,distress,darkness of farmers.They had to suffergreatly in both material life and spiritual life.In terms of material life,they faced the problem of food to eat and clothes to wearin daily life.Two writersalso referred to one of the causes leading to the misery of the peasants:bureaucracy,infantility and incompetent leadership class in the countryside.In spiritual life,farmers always struggle with hunger and poverty to preserve their dignity.Both writers especially depicted their good qualities in war and in peace as well such as bravery in the war and courageously pursuing love and personal happiness against the restraints of religion.However,two writers were also concerned about the inherent bad habits of farmers and their alienation in the time of market economy as well as the conflict between the rural and urban area.In addition,when writing about the images of farmers,Mo Yan focused on the root causes of their suffering including war,land reform,great Cultural Revolution and old-fashioned habits and customs.It means that the fate of the farmers is tied to the fluctuation of history.Meanwhile,Ta Duy Anh mainly focused on the cause of hatred and old-fashioned customs leading to the suffering of the farmer.The active space of the farmer’s image in Mo Yan’s writing is also wider than in Ta Duy Anh’s work.At the same time,Mo Yan also paid attention to the heroic aspect,overcoming the rigidity of the fate among farmers whileTa Duy Anh mostly emphasized the peasants as victims of the situation.Therefore,Ta Duy Anh’s rural composition was not as epic as in Mac.This is due to the difference in the literary tradition inherited by two writers.When writing about the limitations of the farmers,Mo Yan related to the topic of cannibalism,but this topic was not seen in Ta Duy Anh’s composition.He mainly focused on prejudices and hatred.Mo Yan were concerned about the relationship between farmers and historical events while Ta Duy Anh concentrated on relations among the people in the relatively narrow space of survival.Chapter 4 dealed with the image of rural women in the work of two writers.The reason for separating a rural woman’s image into an independent chapter is that the two writers gave the woman the insightful page with many unique points.Compared to chapter 3 depicting farmers in general,this chapter separated the image of women in order to emphasize their unique destiny in rural life,in whichMo Yan and Ta Duy Anh all wrote about appearance beauty and inner beauty of rural women.Furthermore,both writers were concerned about the tragedy of their livesdespitetheir attractive appearance and good personalities.However,the image of rural women in Mo Yan and Ta Duy Anh’s works has many differences.Apart from appearance beauty,Mac Ngoc paid attention to the reproductive or linga-yoni beauty while Ta Duy Anh focused on the pure and holy beauty.In terms of ethical beauty,Mo Yan often praised the desire for free love,courageously overcoming the barriers of family and society restrains,actively pursuing love,personal happiness,but this topicwas not found in rural woman in Ta Duy Anh’s composition.Mo Yan and Ta Duy Anh all tended to symbolize the image of rural women,but Mo Yanseemed to turn rural women into the national symbol while Ta Duy Anh regarded image of rural women as the symbol of beauty and goodness.Mo Yan more focused on the rural women as victims of historical change and old fashioned habits and customs while Ta Duy Anh he paid more attention to the rural women as the victims of prejudice.These similarities and differences are rooted in the traditions of historical and cultural literature,the real life of the two countries,as well as the accents of the writer’s style.Chapter 5 studied rural narrative arts of Mo Yan and Ta Duy Anh.Although the narrative arts of both writers are rich and varied,in this chapter,the writers paid close attention to the narrative structure;Art of character building and narrator,narrative point of view;and narrative language.From there,it can be seen that Mo Yan and Ta Duy Anh used the structure in chronological order,structure of reversetime order,the structure of the story in the story;in character building.Furthermore,both are interested in magical writing style.In terms of the narrator and narrative point of view,the narrative language,both writers referred to the diversity of the artistic point of view,the use of oral language and even the rough language.Apart from the similarities,the rural narratives of the two writers are no distinguished.Ta Duy Anh’s narrative innovations of arts mainly concentrated on urban themeswhile rural themes are mainly in his early 2000’s compositions(except farewell to the dark).Meanwhile,Mo Yan’s writings werepredominantly rural themes and he made great effort to create something new in each work.Mo Yan still maintained the minor and main storyline clearly in the narrative structure as well as the parallel structure while Ta Duy Anh tends to blur the plot.In terms of the narrator and the artistic point of view,Mo Yan used the narrative point of view from the second person,especially the narrator,which was not found in Ta Duy Anh’s composition.In terms of the narrative language,the level of using rough language,influenced by folk language and more profane and cursing language could be seen in Mo Yan’s writing,but he focused on the sensory language,while Ta Duy Anh paid attention to the parody language.Overall,when writing about rural issues,Mo Yan and Ta Duy Anh have many similarities and differences in terms of content and narrative art.This is rooted in the reality of the farmers’ lives in the two different countries and the literary traditions of the two countries,influenced by modern western literature,as well aswriting style and artistic point of view of each writer.This can be seen the resemblance and disparityin a certain extent of contemporary literature inChina and Viet Nam.