Comparative Study On The Theme Of Identity In Philip Roth And Milan Kundera Works

The paper put Philip Ross and Milan Kundera’ s works in the diasporic vision,combined with the relevant theories of identity and the skills of parallel research, inorder to have a theme comparation study of their major literary works about “Identity”and the deep understanding of the self-existence and identity.Compared to Milan Kundera, Philip Ross is not familiar with us. Philip Roth(1933-), after the Bernard Malamud, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Saul Bellow, is anoutstanding representative of the new generation of Jewish literary writers inContemporary American ethnic minority literature, especially in Jewish literary writer.He was highly influential in the contemporary American literary circle even in theworld, known as "wunderkind", because of his works’ profound themes and complexart creation techniques. Ross is truly an "award collector", such as the National BookAward, the Pulitzer Prize for literature, the National Book Asesociation and theFaulkner Award. He won the Booker International Literary Award in2011, and healways is a popular candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. The end of2012,79-year-old Philip Rose accepted an interview with foreign media, announced that hewas done writing. Nemesis is his last novel, published in2010.As the representatives of the Diaspora writers, Kundera’ s “Forgotten Trilogy”fully express the theme of "identity", reflecting the inner world of immigrant writerswho are in different cultures. Although Roth and Kundera live in different countries,their works both focus on living conditions as well as the identity crisis, and then theybegan to inquire about the self and problems. The protagonists of Roth’s works areliving in the specific historical and political conditions, seeking the integration withthe mainstream society through a variety of ways, but they still lost themselves.The first part of this article talks about Kundera’s “exile writing” and Rothrelating to the identity concept. After explaining the related concepts, the paperanalyze the background of two writers, which forcing them to construct an infinitedesire for self-identity. The second to the fourth part summarize the connotations of Kundera and Roth’s self-identity and group identity from the three aspects of political,ethnic and gender-ethics.All in all, this article makes every effort to do holistic identity recognition ofMilan Kundera and Philip Roth with systematic comparative study. When investigatethe presence of ethnic minority status and identity crisis, look into the process ofglobalization in the modern cultural and spiritual survival of the state, offering newperspectives for the study Philip Roth’s literary works.