Pursuit Of "Self": A Study Of Identity Reconstruction Of Joseph Brodsky From The Perspective Of Diaspora

The proliferation of Nobel diasporic writers arouses the attention of literature critics. And interests in this phenomenon grow immense. More and more of them are engaged in this research field. Joseph Brodsky, as one of diasporic writers who won the Nobel Prize for Literature,has achieved impressive success in his literary career,making his Russian poems and English essays well acknowledged in the literature circle.In terms of the research on his poetry at home and abroad, it has reached a systematic and profound level. However, his essays catch less eyes, which is pitiful for the Brodsky Study.Joseph Brodsky has published three essay collections, namely, Watermark (1986),Less Than One (1992) and On Grief and Reason (1995). Based on the above collections,this thesis takes other relevant materials as extra evidence, such as his poems,conversations, biography and interviews. Via internal and external analyses, it explores Brodsky’s path of identity reconstruction under the diaspora condition. "What influence diaspora experience has on Joseph Brodsky’s identity?", "How did Brodsky struggle to adapt himself to changes of his identity?", and "Why could Brodsky restore his identity under the diaspora condition?" are the focuses of this thesis.Brodsky has undergone three stages in the reconstruction process. The thesis begins with the exploration of his anxieties of language and identity that Brodsky suffered when he turned diaspora. It is,in essence, a diasporic plight that results from the loss and displacement of identity, which pushes him into the danger of being marginalized. That is the point when he progressed from the first stage to the second stage. To get rid of it, the writer took a series of actions to reconstruct his identity,including resetting the language and genre of creation. The former way aims to achieve the goal via translation of his Russian poetry and creation of English poems, in which he gave up the cultural insistence of his mother tongue. Though the linguistic compromise did not bring success to his reconstruction, his diasporic identity was in embryo. And it came into being in his second attempt when he tried to reset the genre.In the shift from poetry to essays, he gained the continuity of his previous identity as well as the recognition from the public. But what he benefited from it is far more than reconstruction because he reinvented his identity and relocated himself. Hence, he approached to the third phase. In his diasporic writing, he restored his previous identity which was traumatized by politics. Further, he built a literature utopia to protect his identity. Besides, the homeless writer was relocated in his imaginary homeland, which is a great compensation for the lack of sense of belonging in his diasporic identity.During the linear process,taking his previous identity as a reference,literary creation as an instrument and identity continuity as the final end,he intertwined his diaspora experience with the reconstruction of his identity. Via this, he reconnected himself with his poet identity in the meanwhile a new identity was emerged in his diasporic creations.This thesis,a research on the identity reconstruction of Joseph Brodsky from the perspective of diaspora, breaches the temporal research gap as well as provides new dimension for study on his essays. Moreover, in terms of the text type, essays are more authentic compared with fictive novels. Therefore, the paper could offer a more reliable reference for the diasporas in the globalization era when this phenomenon is increasingly common.