Research On The Novel By Lin Mei From The Perspective Of Cultural Criticism

With the 'going abroad' tide from 1970s and 1980s,new immigrant literature has gradually developed and became a significant part of Chinese literature in the world.The new immigrant literature is very different from the literature of Taiwan overseas students in 1960s and the creation of ethnic Chinese in foreign countries.Li Mei,migrating to Hong Kong in 1970s and then settling in Netherlands,is one of representative writers of new immigrant literature in Europe.The experience of literary creation that Li Mei insists on and her literary achievements have a very palpable typicality among new immigrant writers.Exploring her novel's feature and meaning and what new theme,characteristic and experience her novel provides are critical for Chinese literature in the world and new immigrant literature.Meanwhile,it is fundamental for demonstrating immigrant literature of Fujian.By research,the development and the whole artistic world of Lin Mei's novels can be exploded.In the end,characteristics and significance of Lin Mei's novels will be concluded.In addition to introduction and conclusion,this paper has five chapters.Introduction section presents the methodologies and literature review.The first chapter briefly introduces Lin Mei's lifetime and her view on literature creation.Her point of view was developed with personal life that she has experienced three different social forms in Asian and Europe from 20th to 21th century.Lin Mei's literature views include her pursue to beauty of literature,her description of human as well as humanity and her conception of world literature.The second chapter investigates the identity problems in Lin Mei's novels.First,Lin Mei criticized the overflow of rationalized instrumentalism through the crisis of identification among westerners.Then,Lin Mei expressed her reflection on the dilemma of modernization of non-western countries through the pursue of identity in oriental immigrants.Based on some universal values,both of them search for the identity of 'World Citizen',indicating the common prosperity and symbiotic relationship from culture hybidity.The third chapter investigates the body description in Lin Mei's novels.Through criticizing the discipline of external forces on body,her novels speculate the eternal philosophical questions-the opposition of body and soul After comparing with body description in contemporary literature,we can conclude that what her novels advocate is a poetic recreation of body and soul.The fourth chapter investigates the transformation of views on gender in Lin Mei's novels.Her early novels expressed voice of protest to women's suppressed status while her recent novels are the poetic writing for advocating harmony between male and female.This transformation is not only the progress from "female" to "gender" but also a excellent change from "I" to "we".The fifth chapter is on her dialogism.Dialogue beyond time and space makes them cross culture boundary and dialogue between different identities shows her focus on different kinds of people.However,the uncompleted dialogue between author and protagonist leads to uncompleted polyphony.The conclusion section concludes the characteristics and meaning of Lin Mei's novels based on the previous five chapters and compares her creations with new century immigrant literature.