| Known for her distinctly fragmented style of writing,Olga Tokarczuk,the 2018 Nobel Prize winner,is from Poland but regards herself as a world writer.From Primeval and Other Times,House of Day,House of Night at the end of the last century,to Flights,written in this century,her use of fragmentation has become increasingly proficient in this series of novels.Some researchers have referred to this as the ’Star Cluster Novels’,borrowing the phrase’a cluster of stars,not a definite arrangement,contains the truth’ from Flights to sum up Tokarczuk’s star-cluster thinking in her fragmented narratives:The chapters are scattered like stars,each retaining a separate subjectivity,seemingly unrelated but in fact interconnected.The key concept that can be extracted from Tokarczuk’s many years of writing is that of cosmopolitanism.From 1827,when Goethe first proposed the concept of world literature,to the present,the connotations of world literature and cosmopolitanism have continued to change over generations of research and discussion.In the 21st century,David Damrosch defined the concept of world literature by triple meanings:the world,the text and the reader.It is clear that cosmopolitanism should be a transcendent characteristic of literature,capable of taking the readers into other times and spaces.In the Chinese scholar,Chen Sihe’s study of the cosmopolitan factor,he emphasized the cosmopolitan environment of existence and saw the world as a broad platform for dialogue among multiple cultures on an equal footing,where people from different countries and regions were confronted with the same type of phenomenon in frequent exchanges,which might lead to certain ideological similarities,and where various cultures remained independent and permeate each other,ultimately forming a harmonious polyphony.The result was a harmonious polyphonic chorus.These are the two main references to the cosmopolitanism of the ’Star Cluster Novels’ that is the focus of this dissertation.The ’Star Cluster Novels’,which convey cosmopolitanism,are a series of deep,vast and tender works that reflect the cosmopolitan consciousness of a contemporary world writer who respects the fact of existence of different individuals,cares for the unique souls of existence and their suffering,seeks opportunities for communication and understanding from a higher spiritual and experiential level,and asks questions about the unknown space and time of humanity...The cosmopolitan nature of the’Star Cluster Novels’ leads to a more transcendent and pioneering path of development of world literature.With the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Tokarczuk,the ’Star Cluster Novels’ have become another new constellation in the treasure trove of world literature,and have also provided a new direction for the future development of world literature.This dissertation will focus on the cosmopolitanism in ’Star Cluster Novels’ in which the first three chapters will discuss the comprehensive context in which the ’Star Cluster Novels’ emerged,the considered cosmopolitan writing techniques applied,and the artistic temperament of the ’Star Cluster Novels’,which is characterized by cosmopolitanism.And in the fourth chapter,I will conclude the relationship between Tokarczuk’s literary achievements and cosmopolitanism,pointing out the inspiration this relationship may bring to world literature. |
