Journey Of Spiritual Striving: Exile & Quest

This paper, taking Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain as objects of analysis, and myth—archetypal criticism as analysis theory, focuses on the parallel comparison of the two works from the aspects of literal archetypes and narrative patterns. Though both of them are concerned with the same literary motif—exile & quest, the former exalts the aspirant spirits by portraying the rough journey of the protagonists and their glorious arrival to the heaven; while the latter exposes the existential dilemma of modern people by depicting the endless wandering of the body in reality and spirits in imagination. The thesis is composed of five chapters.Chapter 1 introduces the life careers of John Bunyan and Gao Xingjian, and their masterpieces, The Pilgrim's Progress and Soul Mountain, which are the target texts of the thesis. Then I will give a critical overview of the two texts and present my research motivation and methodology of this thesis.Chapter 2 is a survey of archetypal criticism with respective contributions by the three key figures J. G Frazer, C. G Jung and N. Frye.Chapter 3 puts emphasis on the analysis of two Biblical allusions, Eden and Noah's ark, which recur in the two novels. I come to the conclusion that Bunyan manages to promote the Christian ideology for purity by applying the original connotations of them to his work. On the contrary, Gao distorts the original meanings of the allusions and endows fresh implications to them. I also give examination on the image of "water" in the two works. Bunyan considers it as the medium to the eternal life like the ceremony of Baptism. But Gao relates water to be the synonym of death.Chapter 4 discusses the mythoi of the two novels. No matter in plot or characterization, The Pilgrim's Progress fits perfectly with the features of romance specified by Frye. It is the archetype of summer in terms of mythoi. There is no traditional protagonist in Soul Mountain, and the quest turns out to be nothingness, and everything remains in chaos, which are the typical characteristics of irony. So it is the archetype of winter in terms of mythoi.Chapter 5 is the conclusion, which summarizes the findings in the archetypal analysis of the two works, and reveals how the two writers present two kinds of existing conditions by following or displacing the archetypes.