A Comparison Of Images Of Madness In A Madman’s Diary And Red Smile

In May 1918,Lu Xun’s A Madman’s Diary was published in the New Youth magazine,which is the first work of modern Chinese novels.Since the publication of A Madman’s Diary for more than a hundred years,the academic circles at home and abroad have accumulated a large number of research results around its language,form,thought,meaning,writing source and other aspects.As far as the writing sources of his creation are concerned,the reference to Lu Xun’s A Madman’s Diary will be associated with Gogol and his novel of the same name.The titles of the two works are the same and,Lu Xun clearly stated that his creation of A Madman’s Diary was influenced by Gogol.What Lu Xun did not mention,however,was that A Madman’s Diary was also influenced by another Russian writer,L.Andreyev.In addition,Lu Xun’s A Madman’s Diary and Andreyev’s Red Smile have amazing similarities in content,in such aspects as the protagonists of the two works,namely,the madman and the brothers.They are not only typical images of madness,but also show a high degree of similarities.This thesis consists of three parts.The first part is introduction,which summarizes the reasons for this topic and the origin between Lu Xun and Andreyev.The second part of the paper is divided into four chapters: the first chapter briefly describes the definition and significance of images of madness,and introduces those images in the works of Lu Xun and Andreyev.The second chapter compares the madman in A Madman’s Diary and the brothers in Red Smile,and discusses their similarities and differences.The third chapter analyzes the main reasons for their similarities and differences.The fourth chapter,combined with Foucault’s madness theory,summarizes the common theoretical value of the madman and the brothers.The third part is the conclusion,which summarizes major findings and explains the limitations of this paper and possibilities for future research.Through the parallel comparison of the madmen and the brothers,we can find the similarities between madmen and brothers in “identity”,“psychology” and “connotation of madness”,as well as the differences in “mode”,“function” and ending of their madness,which are closely related to their respective societies and the writers who shaped them.Fundamentally,Lu Xun and Andreyev both expressed their criticism of social reality through images of madness.Hopefully,discussions on the ways by which Lu Xun and Andreyev realized the repositioning of rationality and madness and the construction of the discourse right of madness in the shaping of the image of madmen will supplement Foucault’s madness theory and emphasizes people’s independent thinking ability.