Late Eileen Chang’s "Rewriting" Novels And Evaluation Question

Eileen Chang often modifies and even rewrites her works,which is particularly prominent in her later works.Some researchers believe that Eileen Chang’s “rewriting” novels reflect more mature skills and deeper life experience.On the other hand,some researchers believe that a writer who repeats and restates his early work is clearly a failure of creativity.This paper focuses on Eileen Chang’s “rewriting” phenomenon,which is mainly used as the entry point,and discuss the evaluation of Eileen Chang in the later years.Specifically,there’re two main objectives in the paper.The first is to make a careful comparison of the text before and after the rewriting of Eileen Chang,in order to find out the difference caused by “rewriting” and explore the deep reasons.Secondly,the author puts forward her own views in the current research field.According to Eliot’s concept of“traditional and individual talents”,this paper believes that Eileen Chang in her later years is obsessed with “individual talents” and ignores the problems of dialogue with The Times.Her later work is an achievement in personal consciousness and literary skill,but it must also be limited.The paper is divided into four parts.The first three chapters are the historical description and content analysis of Eileen Chang’s “rewriting” works in her later years.The fourth chapter,on the basis of description and analysis,draws the conclusion that it is not appropriate to overestimate Eileen Chang’s later creation.Specifically,the first chapter discusses Eileen Chang’s rewriting of “Jin Suo Ji”.She made great changes to the tone,characters and plots of the novel,which led to the publication of “Yuan Nv”.Eileen Chang has a strong “anti-May4th” complex,and she consciously keeps a distance from the mainstream and The Times,so she rewrote the only work that echoed the themes of the May 4th movement.As a result of the rewriting,“Yuan Nv” highlights the desolation rather than the resistance,not to mention the fierce struggle.Eileen Chang doesn’t like to write about extreme people,she praises “contrast of variation” in her writing.The second chapter discusses the rewriting of “Shi Ba Chun” and“Xiao Ai”.The rewriting of the two novels is very similar,they both deleted the politically relevant content of the original text,cut to the “tail of light”,return to Eileen Chang’s desolatehas always been the theme,it is the embodiment of “de-revolution” consciousness.The third chapter mainly discusses the rewriting of Eileen Chang’s personal and family,she took the early prose “Si Yu”,“Tong Yan Wu Ji” and “Jin Yu Lu" rewritten as an autobiography novels such as “Lei Feng Ta”,“Yi Jing” and “Xiao Tuan Yuan”.These works are beautifully written and mature,but they are too detailed and lengthy to fail in the United States.The reason for her failure is that she is too heavy on her own “monologue” and ignores the context of The Times,which makes it difficult for her to be echoed by readers.The fourth chapter discusses the evaluation of Eileen Chang in the later period.Eileen Chang is always alert to the trend of The Times and wants to highlight her personal and personality.Ironically,however,her fame and newfound attention are all tied to The Times.As a whole,in the later period,Eileen Chang could not find a balance between her personal ability and the social age,and her achievements were limited.