A Feminist Narratological Analysis Of The Heroine Dai Fenglian In Mo Yan’s Red Sorghum

Up to now, most researches related to feminism are confined to the female writers’ works. However, generally speaking, feminism is gender-neutral. Since the 1980 s, the emergence and development of many new theories, especially the inter-discipline of feminist narratology which is the combination of narratology and feminism, provides a new angle to analyze feminism.Mo Yan is an outstanding male writer in the history of Chinese literature. At the same time, he is also the first Chinese Nobel Prize winner for literature. As a male writer, the female images in Mo Yan’s works are no inferior to male ones. In 1986, Mo Yan published his novel Red Sorghum. In this novel, Mo Yan shaped a vigorous and brave female image in Gaomi Northeast Township during the Anti-Japanese War by various strategies of feminist narratology, such as point of view, narrative voice and narrative focus. This thesis briefly introduces the development of narratology, feminism, and feminist narratology both abroad and at home, and applies the related theories of feminist narratology to the analysis of the heroine of Mo Yan’s novel—Red Sorghum, with the hope of finding out how feminism is reflected in the heroine Dai Fenglian. And at last, Mo Yan’s feminist view is also discussed.The study shows that various narratological perspectives and voices shape a stereoscopic feminist image of the heroine, and give readers a more direct feeling. The innovations in shaping a different female figure in Red Sorghum break the thought stereotype of females. It is hoped that the research approach and the analyzing process in this thesis can serve as a reference for the growing number of people concerned with applying feminist narratology to the analysis of literary works, thus providing a wider scope for related studies.