On Illness Narratives In Yi Zhou's Novels

Yi Zhou,a heavyweight contemporary writer born in the 1970 s,has created a series of novels related to illness narratives.Illness is an important writing theme in his literature.Yi Zhou's novels has paid particular attention to the physical and spiritual illnesses of men.In these works,the themes of illness narratives constantly revolve around three aspects: the existential plight of men,the emotional pain relating to love,and the relationship between men and the times.Through illness narration,Yi Zhou delves into the spiritual world of modern men to present their befuddlement and dejection towards their own existence,the torment felt by men in social relations and the gap between men's ideals and reality.All these elements have endowed Yi Zhou's novels with a lyrical quality that exhibits dismal and profound feelings.This paper examines the illness narratives in Yi Zhou's novels.By sorting out and summarizing achievements made by existing studies,this paper draws on the unique characteristics pertaining to Yi Zhou's novel creation,in combination with the intensive reading of the texts relating to illness narratives,to present an in-depth analysis of the metaphorical connotation of these narratives in Yi Zhou's novels with a view of exploring their unique values and implications.This paper is divided into five sections:The first section is introduction.In this section,a biographical account of Yi Zhou and his literary creation is provided,the achievements of existing studies are sorted out and analyzed,and the implications and approaches to this research are described.The second section deals with the metaphor of lameness.By focusing on the lameness of the protagonist Ma Ling in the novel of The Year of Lameness,this section explains the metaphorical connotation of lameness and analyzes the dual sufferings encountered by the urban underclass groups reflected by the metaphor.The third section addresses the metaphor of spiritual trauma.By focusing on the image of a woman who falls ill and is lost between possessiveness and existence,this section illustrates the metaphor of women's spiritual trauma in order to analyze how modern women could be liberated.The fourth section examines the metaphor of depression.Focusing on the protagonist suffering from depression in the novel of Liu Xiaodong,this section shines a light on the metaphorical connotation of depression by analyzing the spiritual plights faced by middle-aged intellectuals.The fifth section draws the conclusion.The metaphors like lameness,spiritual trauma and depression in Yi Zhou's illness narratives are all problems of modern people's existential conditions.Arguably,it is the exploration of men's spiritual world and the examination of the essence of men's existence that constitute the value and significance of Yi Zhou's literary creations.