| Yan Geling is a popular overseas Chinese writer who has attracted much attention in recent years. Because she has traveled around the world for many years, her rich experience as well as the transformation of her cultural identity has brought her unique understanding and consideration to human nature, history, and life. The constant motifs she uses in her novels heavily represent human nature, which sprouted from her inspiration from soldiers’ emotions in the earlier periods, the exposition of hidden human nature of overseas immigrants, the reconsideration to foreign countries, Chinese history, and the reflection of human life. The combination of multicultural elements and her rich experience to life has formed her unique multicultural perspective.Previous researchers mainly focused their attention to some specific point of human nature showed in Yan Geling’s novels, but few focused on her multicultural influence and the connection of her life in different periods. This thesis analyzes Yan Geling’s multicultural perspective, her rich social experience, and will go into detail in three parts about the use of human nature in her works.The first part explores Yan Geling’s preliminary exploration to human nature. It carefully analyzes three military novels written in the1980s to further understand the malformed craziness that is kept silent and the distorted, oppressed human nature. The second part mainly examines her early works which she wrote abroad. These works depict the sullen life of immigrants, their reminiscence of the motherland, and the subtle yet complicated personal connection in a foreign culture. Lastly, the third part focuses on her three novels written in the recent years which study the female images of Wang Putao, Tian Sufei, etc., and her emphasis on multiple cultures-especially the primitive life in Africa. In this order, this thesis will assess Yan Geling’s works as they go through a journey of transformation and explore human nature. |
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