The Comparison Study Of The Mode Of Father And Son Relationship In Chinese And Western Saga Novels In The First Fifty Years Of 20th Century

With their long-lasting vitality, saga novels have been fascinating the readers since it came into existence. In the history of both Chinese and Western literature, literary works devoting to the relationship between father and son are abundant. Inevitably the father and son relationship becomes the focus of this genre of literary works with the emergence of saga novels. The mode of father and son relationship in saga novels can be traced back to those Chinese and Western legends concerning the same topic, with the legendary father and son relationship being the matrix of the subsequent modes of saga novels, which had been developed in neoteric period in Chinese and Western saga novels. Those early saga novels in China and abroad had annotated the differences between Chinese and Western literature concerning the theme being discussed. The early 20th century marked the flourishing period of saga novels in which different modes of father and son relationship were developed. Based on the theory comparative literature, the author tries to make a parallel comparative analysis of the father and son relationship in Chinese and Western literature in early 20th century. The author also attempts to probe further into the different social and historical background, cultural tradition, ethnic traits and writing style of individual writers, which can account for the differences.The thesis can be divided into the following five parts:Part One serves as a introduction to propose the subject matter of the thesis: the Chinese and Western saga novels in the early 20th century have denoted a mode of father and son relationship with both differences and inclination to similarities, which deserves our attention. In the part the status in quo of relevant research, thoughts and methods of the research are also covered.Part Two traces the root of father and son relationship in Chinese and Western literatures to the folk stories, with the stories of killing the son to admire filial piety to father in Chinese traditional culture developing from the prototype of Chinese legends and the tales of eating the son and murdering the father following the prototypes of Greek myths. For example, in A Dream in the Red Mansion, there is the typical Chinese traditional mode of father and son relationship annotating the tragic filial relationship between Zheng Jia and Baoyu Jia, while the typical of Western filial relationship had been illustrated in the novel The Newcomes.Part Three analyzes the mode of father and son relationship in Chinese and Western saga novels in the early 20th century. Those saga novels in China had depicted the relationship between fathers'despotism and conservatism and sons'obedience and filial piety; while Western saga novels reveal the notional conflicts between father and son, which are the subsequence of the tradition of murdering the father. Meanwhile, there are similarities between Chinese and Western saga novels in depicting the filial relationships, with the recognition of father from son, the conflict between them, and the subordination of father by son.Part Four traces the modes of Chinese and Western filial relationship. It argues that due to the different cultural context and traditional differences in the early 20th century, saga novels in China and abroad had developed different modes of filial relationships.Part Five is the concluding remarks. In this part the reasons for the differences between Chinese and Western saga novels have been discussed, pointing out the cultural connotation and significances of those novels: Sons'treacheries of fathers indicate the care and pursuit for selves; the competition between sons and fathers; the overthrow of obsolete dominion of fathers by the rising strength of the sons; and the substitution of the new lives for the old ones in social subrogation.