Trauma Experience And Literary Writing

Zhang Zhang Ailing(1920-1995)is a legendary female writer in the history of modern Chinese literature.Her growing traumatic experience and the traumatic experience of the world have created her self-abased,isolated,and sensitive personality,which has also prompted her to embark on the road of literary creation.When she first stepped into the literary world in the 1940 s,she surprised the literary world in the enemy-occupied area with her refinement and perfection works.Many people used “genius” to explain the height that others could hardly reach.William Somerset Maugham(1874-1965)is a famous British writer whose works are popular among readers all over the world.His personality and creation are deeply influenced by traumatic experience in his childhood and turbulent times.From the aspects of self-certification,other-evidence,creative thinking and techniques,we can conclude that there is a clear and stable influencing and receiving relationship between Zhang Ailing and Maugham,which makes the comparative study of the dissertation feasible.Although Zhang Ailing and Maugham grow up in different time and space,they show a deep consistency from thoughts and emotions to narrative art.The similar traumatic experience should be an important reason.The term trauma,is intended to be physical injury,but later extended to medical profession and psychotherapy.Freud's research points out that trauma includes not only physical trauma but also psychological/mental injuries,which becomes the source of traumatic theory.Since the mid-1990 s,the theory of trauma has been developed into the field of literary research by scholars like Kathy Carus and others.In the dissertation,trauma refers to spiritual or psychological trauma.It is a strong,continuous pain difficult to get rid of,with characteristics of delay,repeatability,flashback and so on.Writers' traumatic experience will have a profound and continuous impact on their literary creation.Both Zhang Ailing and Maugham have experienced unfortunate childhood and chaotic growth environments.Family,the society,and the situation bring them various degrees of damages,resulting in meticulous feelings,sensitive nerves,calm observation,and mental ailments like “insecurity”and “uncertainty” which are difficult to get rid of.Poetry is to people,like pearls to oysters.Zhang Ailing and Maugham's traumatic experience has become an important motivation for their literary creation.They also create their nihilistic outlook on life,anti-romantic writing techniques,sharp human perspectives,unique and unusual images,.The dissertation mainly applies parallel research methods to compare Zhang Ailing and Maugham from the perspective of trauma experience and literary writing.In addition to introduction,conclusion and the appendix,the dissertation is divided into four chapters.The first chapter combs traumatic experience of Zhang Ailing and Maugham.The second chapter is about Zhang Ailing and Maugham's traumatic experience and their creative motivation.The third chapter analyzes the performance of Zhang Ailing and Maugham's traumatic experience in literary creation.The fourth chapter reflects whether literary writing can heal wounds or not.The details are as follows:The first chapter combs Zhang Ailing and Maugham's traumatic experience in their growing up.The purpose of this chapter is to make reasons for the traumatic experience of the two writers clear to readers.Their mothers passed away in their childhood,and their families broke down,losing the “safety base” that provided them emotional support.They became rootless,living alone in the indifferent,loveless world.Born in turbulent times,the great changes of the times subverted the prosperity and stability of the past.The psychological gap of Zhang Ailing's “born in the end of the world” made her a pessimistic “lost person of the times” and gave her a special perspective on observing society and understanding history.Maugham was deeply attached to the era of Edward,and bound by its strict moral standards.In the age when he lived,the law severely disciplined homosexual acts.Maugham,as a homosexual,was deeply caught in the fear of being discovered.The outbreak of war made their lives even more unfortunate.When Zhang Ailing was forced to get involved in the Hong Kong war when she was in university in Hong Kong,she felt that all her achievements and efforts,whether personal or human,were in vain in the face of war.Under the influence of the fierce militant intellectuals in the West,Maugham actively participated in the First World War.The tremendous casualties and destruction in the war were unparalleled,which led him to create a disillusionment that “everything was completely broken”.Whether passively or actively participating in the war,Zhang Ailing and Maugham had never escaped the “claws” of trauma.The second chapter discusses traumatic experience and creative motivation of Zhang Ailing and Maugham,that is,to analyze how traumatic experience creates their keen literary insight and creative impulse.Zhang Ailing and Maugham did not succumb to personal sufferings,but transcended inferiority,moved from trauma to creation,breaking loneliness and seeking comfort in the literary world.Because of the traumatic events,Zhang Ailing and Maugham fell into a “rigid reaction” between body and mind.Starting from “resentment” and “stuttering disease” respectively,they used literary writing to vent their wounds and break the prison of mind,becoming “alive” from “rigid reaction”.This chapter mainly uses trauma theory and trauma healing methods.The third chapter discusses the performance of traumatic experience in literary creation.The first section is about traumatic experience and outlook on life.Zhang Ailing and Maugham formed a nihilistic outlook on life and a Schopenhauer-style pessimistic outlook on life because of their traumatic experience.The Chinese style of nothingness and desolation constituted the foundation of Zhang Ailing's narrative philosophy.Love,marriage,family,career,effort,and everything would eventually become void.She didn't believe in the so-called “redemption” power,the daily details of the world were the last straw for her and her characters to resist the boundlessness.Schopenhauer's pessimistic factors were immersed in Maugham's work.Maugham believed that life was painful and meaningless,and love was void.Despite this,he still believed in the power of redemption,even in extreme pessimism,never gave up the pursuit of self-realization.The second section is about how traumatic experience gives Zhang Ailing and Maugham a unique perspective on human nature.They analyzed human nature objectively and calmly from the perspective of “a witch” and “a physician” respectively,discovering that most people in the world were “incomplete” and “uncoordinated” characters,to which Zhang Ailing gave more sympathy,while Maugham mainly ridiculed.The third section analyzes the anti-romantic approach in Zhang Ailing and Maugham's literary creation.The sense of disillusionment and despair caused by trauma made them stand on the opposite side of romanticism.They dispelled the lofty and grandeur of war and revolution,deconstructed romantic love and marriage in their works,.The fourth section is about abnormal images in Zhang Ailing and Maugham's works.Trauma can change the psychological structure,causing the individual's nervous state and high sensitivity of cognitive activities.Manifested in the works,they are unusual and strange images.Although Zhang Ailing's novels are based on realism,the feeling for the readers is a decadent,desolate,and ghostly world.Maugham was keen to express the sacredness and evil of the inner world with supernatural images like murder,witchcraft and curses.This chapter combines analogy with contrast and cross-analyzes the similarities and differences between Zhang Ailing and Maugham.The fourth chapter discusses the significance of traumatic experience for literary writing.The first section reflects on the significance of traumatic experience and literary writing on writers' life.Literary writing is one of the ways in which human art is expressed.It plays an important role in wound healing.As Nietzsche said,“Life is self-help through art”.In the context of world literature,traumatic experience and literary writing account for a large proportion,while the therapeutic function of literature is considered to be the basic feature of literature.However,can traumatic writing completely cure psychological trauma? Judging from the performance of Zhang Ailing and Maugham's later life,we can see that they had long been “ill” due to the repeated and persistent trauma,and had failed to calm down the “insecurity” and “unsure” and had not fully forgiven harms from relatives,loved ones,and friends.In the end,they failed to reconcile with their past and the world.Then,since literary writing is difficult to heal,what is its aesthetic significance? The second section analyzes why trauma is difficult to cure and the inseparable relationship between traumatic experience and literary life.