Claudel’s Drama And The Biblical Prototypes

"The Bible"is an important part of christian culture, has intrinsic value and profound significance on Western literature. It is the spirit of the charter of the christian faith, generalizing and representing the cultural tradition and the spirit of Christianity. As a religious scripture, the Bible provides a quality of ideological content for the Western literature; as a literary masterpiece, the Bible provides a wealth of literature prototypes, being the material sources of the Western literature. Therefore, the Bible as the representative of christian culture plays significant effect on literary creation of the Western writers.Claudel’s drama works both have the vast real life contents and profound tradition of christian and the Bible. There is a close relationship between Claudel’s drama and the Bible resources. Throughout Claudel’s drama, a large number of Biblical prototypes about characters, images, themes and the Biblical consciousness about salvation, hope, charity are filled in his drama works.In this thesis, I regard the Bible as the representative of christian to analyze the Bible and Claudel’s drama works by close reading, and aims to use the theory of archetypal criticism so as to analyze the deep implications of the christian and the Bible affect on Claudel.Based on varied perspective analysis, wo can strive to discover thehidden aesthetic implications and artistic charm in the remarkableliterature world.This thesis consists of three parts which including introduction,body and conclusion. The part of introduction briefly introduces thebasic situation of Claudel’s life and his drama writing. It is also abrief-date on the researching of Claudel. It tries to set up abackground of this essay so as to express the aim and the value ofthis thesis.The second part is the body of this thesis which is made up of threechapters. Chapter one focuses on the characters of the Bible prototypein Claudel’s drama. This chapter selectively discusses the Biblicalcharacters in Claudel: Jesus, Bathsheba, angel, and also puts forwardthe significance of the prototype in Claudel’s drama. Chapter two looksinto the Biblical imagery in Claudel’s drama, including “water”,“cross”and “the Garden of Eden”. Chapter three analyses the Christian themes,and it is divided into three sections, discussing the theme of “good andevil”,“justification by faith” and “salvation subject”. This is the essentialpart of the thesis, acting as a bridge between the spirit of Claudel’sdrama and the spirit of Biblical literature.The last part is the conclusion of this thesis. It describes Claudel’sreligious environment which includes the background of family andsocial, to explore the influence of Christianity on Claudel’s literarycreation truly, in order to reaffirm the theme of the full text.