The Heany Burden

In contemporary American literature, Saul Bellow was honored as the Spokesman of the Contemporary American Literature . He was engaged in the literature when he taught in the university and was a typical author of thinking-type and scholarly-type. In his novels, Bellow revealed profoundly crisis, particularly the spiritual crisis of the intellectuals existed in the contemporary Western world. These intellectuals did not lose their faith in the survival and looked for the means to the self-rescuing in their difficult struggle,although they were lonely,agonizing,sullen, perplexed and in the extreme anxious. Made the redemption of intellectuals as the entry point, from the perspective of cultural poetics, This paper was written to study these intellectuals' spirit crisis and redemptive means by putting Bellow's novels on the specific situation of the Jewish culture and then reflected humanism care to the contemporary intellectuals. This paper mainly discusses the following parts:In the introduction,the first was to put forward the questions and summarize the current research to Bellow 's novels , then set forth my innovation and research methods, finally was to define the related concepts .Chapter I, first of all, I analysed the spiritual crisis and the sense of Redemption of these Jewish intellectuals. In the wave of modern civilization they always cherished the ideal of humanism , chose difficultly , walked forward slowly even though they were entangled in the suffering and wandering, despair and hope . Eventually their faith of ideal was not devoid ,so they had become the "Faust." of the contemporary world.Chapter II, I expounded the necessity of redemption from the connotation of Matter of sin, suffering, death that contained in the Jewish culture .At first, The intellectuals had the deep sense of sin, which not only reflected mentation of culture of the Bible "sin" concept, but also brought together the typical cultural mentality of Jewish. Secondly, the suffering would be the obligatory course of these Jewish intellectuals wanted to obtain the redemption. They withstood the double physical and mental torture when they tramping. There were profound link between this state of survival and the sense of the suffering and destiny of the Jew. At last, the death had became the most sensitive issues that touched these Jewish intellectuals . "to be or not to be" became not only the most confused question in their life but also the driving force for redemptionChapter III, I analyzed the paradox of redemption from the aspects of fallacy of redemption and the paradox of redemptive meath, then revealed relationship of the paradox of redemption and the Jewish culture.Chapter IV, I analyzed formation mechanism of redemption which was mainly in two aspects: First, the peripheral situation of the contemporary American Jewish intellectuals, the second was the Bellow's creative ideas about cultural redemption.Conclusion, I mainly set forth the fable of redemption and its current significance.