The Classical Complex Under The Modern Writing

For a long time,people often focus on Ling Shuhua’s works written in the 1920 s and 1930 s,and neglect her later works.With a shift from women’s writing to cultural themes,Ling Shuhua was obviously influenced by the historical background.On the one hand,after the 1930 s,the social order and even the spiritual civilization in China were almost diminished by successive wars,so writers started to bind "individuality" and "self-consciousness" closely to the themes of "state" and "nation".At this time,the cultural encounter between Ling Shuhua and Bloomsbury Group has brought her a turning point for her literary career and personal liberation.She tried to review and reflect on the cultural context of self and history under the gaze of "the other",and finally realized her self-reconstruction.On the other hand,prolonged wandering in foreign countries notwithstanding,Ling Shuhua’s infatuation with her motherland hadn’t ceased.She expressed her pursuit of the sacred and beautiful paradigm in life by looking at the ancient civilizations such as nature and art,and it was also an examination and response to the practical problems existing in the context of Chinese history.From wandering between different cultural identities to constructing an ideal new national culture,Ling Shuhua’s had increasingly made her cultural standpoint clear,which was to create an inclusive national culture.This paper,comprising three chapters,takes Ling Shuhua’s literary works written after she settled in UK in 1947 as the research object.In Chapter One,Ling Shuhua’s family background,literary activities and interpersonal communication in her later period have been summarized for a better understanding of the influence of western culture on her writing,and hence her changeable and complex psychology and cultural mentality during writing in the face of the impact of western culture can be explored.Chapter Two makes a detailed textual analysis of Ling Shuhua’s later works.And the culture themes of her works are displayed through Chinese landscapes such as folk customs,natural landscapes and Chinese classical art such as ancient music and traditional Chinese painting,and explores the implied appeal for human culture and the identity of national culture.Chapter Three starts with Ancient Melodies,one representative of Ling Shuhua’s later works,analyzing the stylistic features of the novel regarding children’s perspective,female characters and lyrical tradition by a comparison with her former works to explore the conversion of the author’s aesthetic ideal and artistic pursuit to traditional Chinese aesthetics by the inheritance and transformation of the novel writing style.Through the discussion of three chapters,Ling Shuhua’s cultural psychology and aesthetic pursuit about the Chinese core comes to the surface,revealing her classical complex under the modern writing.