The Image Of China Described By Ying Chen

As a Canadian writer of Chinese origin,Ying Chen has received repeatedly literature awards(the Prix Quebec-Paris,the Prix Alfred-DesRochers...)and has a good reputation in Canada.Foreign academic circles have studied a lot Ying Chen's cultural identity and postmodernity in her works.The image of China,however,has not been well treated.Compared with foreign research,the domestique research on her works still needs to be further deepened and expanded.In this memoir,we try to analyze the image of China at the base of the theory of imagology,and to give an account of the construction of the image.In the first chapter,we give an overview of Ying Chen's migrant writing,where the transition from intercultural to transcultural phase takes place.Then,we present her first three novels about China,La memoire de l'eau,Les lettres chinoises and L 'ingratitude.In the second chapter,at the base of the theory of imagology in comparative literature,we analyse ideological China and utopian China in Ying Chen.On the one hand,women with feet bandaged,the confused intellectuals,and the feudal superstitious customs constitute the ideological image of China.On the other hand,the nostalgia of the writer turns China into utopia.Traditional festivals and Shanghai snacks are especially staged.However,this kind of nostalgia,deformed by the spatiotemporal distance,is only a consolation for the author.In the third chapter,we are interested in the construction of the image.From the inside,the memory superimposes the past on the present and the dreams pierce the intimate state of the characters.The author looks at China as the Other.From the outside,we try to analyse the relation between the image of China in Ying Chen and the collective imagination of the West in the twentieth century.Moreover,through the comparison with other French-speaking writers of Chinese origin,we realize that Ying Chen tends to conform the image of China to the expectation of the occidental reader and in her works after L 'ingratitude,she wonders about individual destiny instead of taking advantage of her Chinese identity.