Literature Review of Pearl S. Buck 唐林

题目Literature Review of Pearl Buck 文献综述—赛珍珠课程英美女性文学作品赏析教师史丽娜学生唐林学号104050063班级0032013年7月1日Literature Review of Pearl BuckI. Introduction (1)II. Domestic Studies (1)III. Western Studies (4)IV. Comments and Limitations (7)Works Cited (7)I. IntroductionPearl Buck (1592一1973) is one of the most famous novelists in the 20th American literature. Born in Hillsboro, west Virginia. Her Parents, Absalom and Caroline Sydenstricker, were southern Presbytran missionaries stationed in China. She was taken to China when she was about three months old, where she spent most of the first forty years of her life. She was the first American women writer to won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. Her novels have enjoyed great popularity in the whole world. She composed many wonderful works, and The Good Earth is her masterpiece. Once lived in China, she considered the great place as her second hometown. Many of her works were created based on the Chinese and she was greatly influenced by the Chinese culture. she translated one of the most popular novels—Walter Margin to the west, which gained great response and was favored widely. She was great writer as well as a great person to promote the interaction of culture between China and western countries. In China, people have made studies on her from different angles, which is a special contribution to the “Study on Pearl Buck”. This paper is to review the study made on her both by the domestic and western scholars.II. Domestic StudiesThe domestic scholars studied Pearl Buck from different perspectives. To review the main researches, personally, I’d like to divide them into three parts.FeminismMany scholars chose to discuss the feminism of Pearl Buck, which mostly were demonstrated in her main works such as East Wind, Pavilion of Women and the Good Earth. In these works, she showed concerns on women, especially Chinese women. Apart from writing works and articles on women, she became active in both civil rights and women’s rights activities. These social activities embody Pearl Buck’sfeminist features.She created many famous women characters in her works. But O-lan wins the reader’s heart most by her feminine virtues such as diligence and by her admirable virtues that we used to find only in men: industry, courage, and endurance. Other strong women created by Pearl Buck include Jade in Dragon Seed (1942), who has the strong desire to learn knowledge like Yentl and will fight the invaders like Joan of Are; Madame WU in Pavilion of women (1946), who is intelligent and administers a big family with love and wisdom. These strong women convince the readers that women can perform and have performed as well as men do physically and intellectually.The subtitle of East Wind: West Wind,“A Chinese Woman Speaks” suggested an act of defiant feminist affirmation , encapsulating Pearl Buck’s pioneering desire to give voice to the voiceless women of China.The above showed that Pear l Buck’s works demonstrated feminist features. And she is a woman writer for women, and her concerns for women. (Pearl Buck: A Feminist pioneer- a study on Pearl Buck’s Feminist Features, Wang Jing, 2003: 34-35)Another scholars’ The Analysis of Pearl Buck’s Feminist in Pavilion of Women writes that Pearl Buck represent us many women characters, unlike the traditional Chinese women, in her works. These women are no longer obsequious to man, never consider man as the center of their world. On the contrary, they are smart, diligent and kind. They have their own dreams. Pearl Buck described the character- master WU, a man who is ignorant and incompetent, to express Ms. Wu’s great image. Besides, Pearl portrayed a missionary-Andrew, who is forgiving, smart and responsible, to criticize the men which are selfish and opinionated. What’s more, she rebuke the traditional Chinese family concept- father is the master of the family. In such system, woman is just the dependency of man, and they are repressed by the man. (Ding Lin, The Analysis of Pearl Buck’s Feminist in Pavilion of Women, 2010)Pearl Buck is a true practitioner of feminist translation: her feminist consciousness directly influences her understanding of the source text and her standing for women in the target text. Her translation reveals the rich connotation rooted in the source text, and her individualized translation strategies eliminates gender discrimination and values the speech less and marginalized female. As a translator, based on the attitude of respect and understanding, Pearl introduces the alien feminist culture to target readers, aiming to raise people’s awareness of and concern with the oppressed female. Pearl. Buck is a maternal woman writing for women about the problems of women. (Qiu Xiaojuan, On Pearl Buck’s Translation of Shui Hu Zhuan: A Feminist Perspective, 2011)Chinese and Western culturePearl S. Buck has won a transcendental viewpoint on culture development in the collision between the East and West. She had been living among these two different worlds, which also helped her notice t he differences of these two types of cultures. It is Pearl S. Buck’s wish that the East and the West could understand each other and both bring about a great advance; a varied culture view could emerge as well. (李秀丽, 乔世华,论赛珍珠的文化选择,2009)The translation of All Man Are Brothers by Pearl Buck, was widely criticized and for along time regarded as a bad trans1ation, especially for its language. However, the translation strategies that Pearl Buck used are closely related to her culture background and living experience. She grew up and live in China for the fist half of her life, therefore, she had a dual一cultural identity, i.e Chinese and western cultural identity. Since she could hardly find a culture identity either in States or in China, Pearl Buck tied to build up a dual-culture identity for herself. Meanwhile, she advocated the equal footing of cultural exchange between China and west. The additions of her personal understandings about Shui Hu Zhuan and Chinese culture to her trans1ation, especially elements in default in het source language cause many civisms. (Ma Yi, A Study of the Cultural Hermeneutics in Pearls Buck’s translation of All Man Are Brothers, 2006)There’s a writer say that Pearl Buck lived in China for over 30 years, her works reveal the Chinese to the westerns. They have partly changed the impression of Chinese and Chinese culture on the west. As a dual-culture writer, Pearl tried to write from a different ways and angels. However, most of her works are still covered by the western culture. Some of her works embodies the Puritanism, individualism and the superiority of the Americans. (党玲,李华,试析赛珍珠作品中展现的西方文化, Writer Magazine 2011 No.11)EducationEducation is not only crucial in the formulating of diversified human values and national cultures, but also the key to realize social equality and harmony considered by Pearl Buck, who is the advocate of human equality and unity. As a mother of several children, she also paid much attention to the education of adolescents, ethics and psychological education in particular. Besides, in the profess of cultural exchanges she engaged in, she concerned more about the educational issue of the multi一cultural education as well.The educational concepts in Pearl Buck’s works can be analyzed systematically in the three angles of educational purpose, subject and methods. For Pearl Buck,education has two purposes: one is to educate human beings knowledge, wisdom and moral integrity, and the other is for practical use. The subject of education is Considered to be the essence in the process of education with the three major qualities of equality, initiative and being social. Based on the theories of purpose and subject, Pearl Buck demonstrated a series of educational methods. With regard to school education, it can be concluded to be theories of initiative, diversification and practice. Social education embodies the blood-relationship education, and environmental education. The former one is composed of accumulated civilization and education of history as well while environmental education concludes education of family and personal experiences.Meanwhile, Pearl Buck paid much attention to the educational issue of the marginal world. Generally speaking, the item marginal means anything trivial that can be ignored or displaced. The marginal world in Pearl Buck’s works refers to groups of people who’re underprivileged, have Physical oriental defeats and the lost generations in cultural conflicts. Pearls Buck considered that being educated is the basic human right, and the only effective way to save them from Poverty, to eliminate discrimination and violence and realize cultural exchanges and human equality by promotion of social moral. Besides, the plural methods of multi-cultural education also consist of her concern on the basis of her own experiences. The cultural conflicts result in the lost of identities. The education of Patriotism is necessary, and some native consciousness should be woken up. The immigrants are required to become real citizens of another nation by living and merging into the society and developing abilities to absorb similar nutrients. Pearl Buck also mentioned that the common language is the prerequisite of multi-cultural education and tool for cultural exchanges. (Shi Yanyun: On Pearl Buck’s Educational Concepts in Her Works,2005)III. Western StudiesNot only there are many Chinese scholars studied Pearl Buck. Pearl’s wo rks and thinking also attract lots of foreign scholars to pay attention on her. In this part, I will introduce 5 aspects which the foreigners like to research most.Many scholars tend to describe the witness in Pearl’s work. One writes that “Reading The Good Earth in these ways reveals how a novel not overtly concerned with race may contain a subtle discourse that, in fact, says much about racial construction in American culture. Whiteness, as Elizabeth Ellsworth argues, is a dynamic of cultural production and interrelation, of learned social and cultural performances (260). Whiteness is always shifting, always historically framed and situated. And as Martha Mahoney writes, "whiteness, like other racial constructions,is subject to contest and change" (330). "Whiteness," Mahoney continues, "is historically located, malleable, and contingent". Since whiteness is not a real, inherent, natural phenomenon, it must be understood, Rebecca Aarenud argues, as "a highly orchestrated product of culture and nature". She believes that we must recognize whiteness not as a matter of skin color, but as a phenomenon that must be continually reproduced in order to disrupt the belief of whiteness as the status quo, as the norm, as the standard. By analyzing the production of whiteness in The Good Earth, we may disrupt the privileged position of whiteness and, as Morrison suggests, recognize the subtle ways in which the novel is complicit in the discourse of white supremacy.”(Stephen Spencer: The Discourse of Whiteness: Chinese-American History, Pearl S. Buck, and The Good Earth, Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900 - present), Spring 2002, Volume 1, Issue 1)In addition, some people think her contributions of promoting the exchanges of culture between the west and China are valuable and influential.“Pearl Buck spent nearly 40 years in China; it can be said that she spent half of her life in China. Mr. Nixon praised Pearl in his eulogy for her as “a bridge of Eastern and Western civilizations, a great artis t, a sensitive and compassionate person”. Her description of rural China was the most comprehensive and in-depth description of Chinese villages, helping an entire generation of Americans and Westerners to broaden their horizons. In the late 1950s, the American sociologist conducted a survey in which two-thirds of Americans surveyed said their impression of China from 1931 to the mid-1950s was from Pearl S. Buck. Pearl S. Buck’s insight into China, the Chinese people, Chinese history and the future of China has finally been recognized by today’s people and still shines its unique light after 70 years.” (Li Jenny, The Epoch Times A Bridge of Eastern and Western Cultures, December 3, 2012)“I intend to keep my eye on Pearl Buck's statue, which is a reminder th at in China the cultural is always political. In their different ways, and on different scales, both the public and the hidden debates over Pearl Buck and Confucius illustrate the difficulties the Party faces in making up its mind about the past and therefore about the future of the world's most populous country.” (Peter Conn, What the Remarkable Legacy of Pearl Buck Still Means for China, The Atlantic, 2012)“Pearl S. Buck's portrayal of Chinese peasants was the first literary representation, in China as well as in America, of the majority of the Chinese population. Her work changed the image of the Chinese people in the American mind--ultimately facilitating the 1943 repeal of the 61-year-old Chinese Exclusion Act and arousing Americans' support of the Chinese resistance against the Japanese aggression inWorld War II. From a multicultural point of view, Chinese scholar Kang Liao analyzes Buck's phenomenal success and the ensuing neglect of her works by American critics. Liao's insights into Buck's function as one of the few writers from an age of Eurocentrism who shed light on a new age of multiculturalism will be of interest to both students and scholars interested in race, class, and gender issues.” (Kang Liao, Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Bridge Across the Pacific, 179, 1997)IV. Comments and LimitationsPearl Buck, a great writer who promoted the westerns to pay attention to the important part of the world-the great Chinese people through her marvelous works. Her vivid descriptions of the traditional Chinese and culture have built a bridge for the west to have a better understanding of the east. Apart from her great work, she is an great person to bring positive influence to China during the war period. Yet her political contributions cannot be neglected.Works CitedEnglish sourcePearl Buck: A Feminist pioneer- a study on Pearl Buck’s Feminist Features, Wang Jing, 2003: 34-35Ding Lin, The Analysis of Pearl Buck’s Feminist in Pavilion of Women, 2010Qiu Xiaojuan, On Pearl Buck’s Translation of Shui Hu Zhuan: A Feminist Perspective, 2011Ma Yi, A Study of the Cultural Hermeneutics in Pearls Buck’s translation of All Man Are Brothers, 2006Shi Yanyun: On Pearl Buck’s Educational Concepts in Her Works,2005Stephen Spencer: The Discourse of Whiteness: Chinese-American History, Pearl S. Buck, and The Good Earth, Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900 - present), Spring 2002, Volume 1, Issue 1Peter Conn, What the Remarkable Legacy of Pearl Buck Still Means for China, The Atlantic, 2012Kang Liao, Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Bridge Across the Pacific, 179, 1997中文文献李秀丽, 乔世华,论赛珍珠的文化选择,2009党玲,李华,试析赛珍珠作品中展现的西方文化, Writer Magazine 2011 No.11。