On Chinese Folklore And Folkloric Narrative Embodied In The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan,one of the most renowned Chinese American women writers,has earned an international fame since the publication of The Joy Luck Club.Her debut novel has aroused a hit in the research area.It is very common for Chinese American writers to employ Chinese folklore into their literary works.Amy Tan narratives a story,which spans the time and space,gives expression to Chinese folklore.This dissertation makes a tentative exploration of Chinese spiritual and social folklore embodied in The Joy Luck Club and folkloric narrative in the novel from the perspective of folklore,narratology,social linguistics and identity construction.The folklore embodied from the novel reflects the collision and fusion of the eastern and western culture and plays an important role in depicting the characters and promoting the development of the plot.For Chinese American diasporas,who live a vagabond life or immigrate into other countries,the continuity of traditional culture and belief is broken,which leads to the fracture of identities and the dislocation of culture,triggering the indeterminacy of identity.They have to examine their own culture and their actual survival environment in order to construct a new identity.The first chapter is the introduction section,which mainly gives a simple introduction about Amy Tan and her masterpiece The Joy Luck Club,explains the definition,classification and characteristics of folklore,analyzes the relationship between literature and folklore and states the significance of the dissertation.The second chapter elaborates on the embodiment of the main notions of Taoism,including Wuwei and Cycle and Return manifested from the classic work Tao Te Ching.Folk belief is an important aspect of the spiritual folklore,and religious beliefs are the most influential in human ideology.It is Wuwei that guides the mothers to be optimistic under the dual oppression of patriarchy and feudal ethics and forget the horror brought by the war and forget the pains of losing families,travailing across the ocean to pursue a new life.Amy Tan arranges the stories following the rules of game which are narrated during the process of the cycling mah jong.The daughters and mothers span time and space,traversing between reminiscence and reality.The development of the mother-daughter relationship,the return to the mother culture and the seek for the identity go through a complicated process.The notion of Cycle and Return can be interpreted from two perspectives.The first one is the narrative order of the novel,which is delicately arranged according to the rules of mah jong game rather than the chronological order.The second one is the narrative space of the novel.The physical space of the novel and moves circularly and is in accordance with the process of cycle and return.The second chapter mainly analyzes the social folklore embodied in the novel.The dietary structure and family ties,which are important markers to distinguish Chinese Americans from the American society,play an indispensable role in the identity construction.Dietary folklore refers to the customs formed in the process of selection and producing food and picturesque account of the dietary culture.The traditional marriage possess particular modes and are oriented by morality and ethics.From the perspective of religion,marriage is a combination permitted by the gods and ancestors.In old china,the mothers accepted the doomed marriage which were arranged.The essence of marriage is the worldly life for the continuity of the family line.The social folklore embodied from the novel expresses the oppression women has suffered and the confusion about their identity.For the immigrant mothers and daughters,behind the surface of the expression and inheritance of Chinese folklore is the confrontation between different cultures.The fourth chapter mainly explores the folkloric narrative in the novel.Amy Tan tactfully combines the features of mah jong with the traditional chapter style,integrating mah jong with the traditional narrative mode.She also applies talk story tradition to her novel in order to intensify the authenticity of the novel from different perspectives.Linguistic hybridity is one of the most distinctive features of the language employed by Amy Tan.It is presented by the extensive employment of Chinese pidgin English and Chinese Pinyin.The standard English is broken down by directly blending Chinese and the rules of English grammar are destroyed,leading to the challenges of the unyielding authority of English.The hybrid language expresses the cultural aspirations for themselves.The ethnic language is presented under the framework of the mainstream discourse.The last chapter makes a summary of the above discussion.Adopting the language of the main-stream society of America and integrating the narrative modes of traditional Chinese literature,Chinese American females narrate cross-cultural stories in order to highlight the characteristics of ethnic culture and state the identity dilemma caused by the conflicts and contradictions of the mainstream culture in the real life and traditional culture of the mother country.They construct their dual cultural identity by the recognition and inheritance of Chinese folklore in order to quest for the survival and development,constructing a valid way for cultural identity.