Chinese Images In Heterogeneous Cultural Communication

In the past decades, Chinese American literature has gained growing attention; it has been part of the mainstream of American literature in recent years. Maxine Hong Kingston is one of the most influential contemporary Asian American authors. She has established her fame as a successful Chinese American writer for her first work The Woman Warrior which has been well-received by Kingston’s American audience for typical narrative methods and narrative perspective, rich culture of China as well as Chinese images and Chinese legends. Since its publication in1976, The Woman Warrior has maintained a vexed reception history that attests to both its popularity and questions of it. The critical issue of the debate is whether or not Kingston offers a faithful representation of Chinese culture and of Chinese Americans. It has been paid close attention to in terms of sex, race and minority with criticism of all these aspects by both domestic and overseas scholars. However, up to now, there is little research on it from the perspective of Imagology, or the perspective of author’s multicultural values.As an interdisciplinary study, Imagology concerns itself in not only literature but also culture, anthropology, and social study. Imagology is a study of the image and what it concerned with is the representations of "Other" image in historical, cultural and literary context. Imagology in comparative study gives more attention to the interactive relations between those "Other" images, namely the interactive relations between "Self" and "Other","Native" and "Foreign". According to Imagology, any "Other" image creation comes out under an interactive care between "Self" and "Other". As a cultural marginal female, Kingston makes a patchwork of collected Chinese imagination with a confusing self-identification. Based on the theory of Imagology in comparative literature as well as a close study of The Woman Warrior, this thesis analyzes the Chinese images created in the book, and unveils that interaction between "Self" and "Other" affects intercultural communication somehow; with author’s identity as a Chinese American female, it also reveals the process during which the Chinese American women have maintained themselves and struggled in the modern patriarchal society as well as in the multicultural context of American society.This thesis is divided into six chapters. Chapter One is the introduction, including a detailed introduction to Maxine Hong Kingson and her work The Woman Warrior as well as a review of the current related researches at home and abroad; meanwhile, it also presents the research objectives of this thesis. Chapter Two gives a detailed knowledge about Imagology theory in comparative literature. From a perspective of Imagology, Chapter Three analyzes of Maxine Hong Kingston’s cross-cultural writing in The Woman Warrior, mainly its six Chinese female images and Kingston’s attitude toward and true intention to these images. In Chapter Four, taking Kingston’s Chinese American female identity into account, it makes an exploration of "the triple identities" of Maxine Hong Kingston from the respect of Imagology, and then points out that Kingston tries to get out of her identity confusion by means of literary creation and literature characters designing; so, Kingston finds her "Self" by the means of Chinese narration and Chinese images description. When it comes to the fifth chapter, it mainly discusses Kingston’s multicultural values. And the theory and methodology of Imagology will be employed to explain how Kingston shapes these "Other" images and makes these images exist. Chapter Six is the conclusion, it further points out the significance of the study on Chinese image in cross-cultural communication context.The conclusion drawn from the thesis is:Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior is a cross-cultural masterpiece. The China image in this book is a mixture of Kingston’s imagination and illusion of China as well as the influence of American culture. As "the Other", Kingston portrays the marginalized Chinese American women both in China and America and reveals the abnormal marginalization of Chinese Americans and Chinese culture in America. Kingston realizes she is on the horns of a dilemma between Chinese culture and the West culture, so she often wonders her identity. Kingston shapes several Chinese female images by means of literary creation, and then she achieves the self-realization, though it is not very clear.