On Eileen Chang’s Concealed Humor In Her Fictions And Essays

Humor, which is generally considered as a significant category of aesthetics both in daily lives and literature, plays an important role in Eileen Chang’s incredibly plenteous literary world. With various artistic employments and delicate rhetoric, Chang’s insight into grief and ludicrousness in the secular world has been revealed in her novels and essays, of which the unique philosophical thinking involved in individual life makes up the representation and characteristics of Chang’s humor. At the meantime, the exclusive female life sensation and survival experience in her humor standing opposite to the general idea of ’humor’ bring this vocabulary a tough task for ’male’ criterion thus result in the truth and mysteries of Chang’s humor.By probing into Chang’s humor in her novels and essays, this thesis is dedicated to interpret the exact pattern and the aesthetic features of it. Further, the reason why this humor has long been concealed and the specific value of bringing it to light can also be clear under the perspectives of feminism.This thesis is divided into three parts as follow:The first part is introduction, making comments on Eileen Chang’s literary reviews, clarifies the foundation, the theme and the methodology of this study so as to provide its purpose and significance.The second part which is the main body is subdivided into four chapters as follow:Initially, by explaining how ’humor’ has come to an aesthetic category from medical science and how it has been native and transformed, a brief glimpse of the altering terms of this concept will be gain. Moreover, the diversity of humor which is displayed in individuals, nations and gender will be highlighted to claim that humor can be either a rhetoric pattern or an aesthetic feature.Secondly, through close reading on its exact patterns, Chang’s humor takes shape mainly by the general, indirect and ambiguous terms of articulation itself which poses the misplacements in both logic and emotion. Namely, these misplacements consist of unexpected but acceptable plots, exquisite and odd characters, and plenty of rhetoric tactics like homophonic words, subtle annotations and associated metaphors.Then attentions will be drawn to the aesthetic features and the causes of Chang’s humor. Being sensitive to the uncommon in commonplace leads Chang’s concentration onto the charms of this wordly world and this unreasoned life. As her desolation and mercy beneath her eloquence, the exclusive female sensation and survival experience also lie underneath her verbal riches. Her humor, which shows a medium tone between black and white, warm and cold, shares an isomorphic with her aesthetic preference of diversity. As for the causes, both Chang’s acceptance of Chinese and western culture and her self-conscious female cognition should be taken into account.Last but not least, the ignorance and concealment of Chang’s humor will be revealed from the perspectives of feminism. There are different value orientations of humor in different contexts of which the processes are dynamic games involving diverse discourses. And the discourse of gender is one of the players.Compared with male authors as Lin Yutang and Qian Zhongshu, the distinctive expressions of female subjects in Chang’s humor exile obviously from the logic of male discourse and their survival experience. Thus the truth of the discourse of male, with defence of male identities of’Observer’and offence to female speech, will be exposed completely.The third part is conclusion, suggesting the difficulties and values of discussing Chang’s humor in the context of the discourse of male. That is to say, although the recognition of female humor has to plough in the narrow path of the discourse of male, a discovery of its ignorance and concealment is leading to the possibilities of its variety and exposure.