A Study On The Images Of China In The Works Of Justin Hill

Justin Hill is a contemporary British writer who is known for his images of China in his three works-A Bend in the Yellow River, The Drink and Dream Teahouse, and Passing under Heaven. Hill has enjoyed a high prestige in the western literary circles and wins many famous awards for literature several times. Also, he has been deeply appreciated by the western mainstream media coverage, including that Times Literary Supplement describes him as " a Chinese writer".The thesis treats Justin Hill’s three works as the research object and combines narratology and imagologie to analyze the law of literature. It is helpful to unscramble different cultural connotations which hiding in the narrative strategies and to consider the images of China in the contemporary western literary. It is also be propitious to reflect the international relations between China and the western world and to explore the West how to construct "the other "with verbal rights as its form of expressing.There are four chapters in this thesis. The first chapter analyzes Hill’s travel writing-A Bend in the Yellow River. This work uses the first person narrative that the first person narrator stares down China causing misunderstandings among different cultures. Then by discussing the circular narrative structure, it contributes to a lot of soul-searching.The second chapter analyzes the novel-The Drink and Dream Teahouse. Firstly, the story represents the collision of three generations during the very important and special social transformation. Secondly, starting from the narrative angle of view, the thesis is aimed at the ideology of the third person omniscient narration. The narrative time in the work constitutes a cycle of the seasons. Finally, its exploration of Party Secretary Li’s funeral and Beijing Opera singing by Madam Fan bring insight into the conflict between Chinese and Western culture.The third chapter, in Passing under Heaven, analyzes the narrative perspective of "Defamiliarization" and the narrative time of parallel montagethe. Then the thesis explicates its deep narrative structure, based on A.J.Greimas’semiotic rectangle theory, to show the deep cultural significance from a new perspective. We can see that Hill’s Yu Xuanji is a product of the integration of Chinese and Western culture.The fourth chapter observes and studies these three works in general. First of all, it is necessary to find out the changes of narrative strategies——from the point of view of narrative angle:the first person narrative-omniscient narrative- limited narrative; from the point of view of narrative structure:linear structure-nonlinear structure. The changes of narrative strategies reflect that Hill’s attitude to China has changed from rejection, acceptation to appreciation. After that, the reasons of above-mentioned changes, is closely related to not only his personal life experience, education background but also British culture.Under the multi-cultural communication,Hill’s works has been a breakthrough to help us use a dialectic view to merits and drawbacks between Chinese and Western culture. There is an obvious contrast between the cultures of East and West, so we cannot fight with each other and should promote the development of human civilization, with tolerance, comprehension and complementarity.