On Life Orientation and Shaping Strategy of Literati in The Scholars
Date Issued
2015
Date
2015
Author(s)
Ji, Wenting
Abstract
This thesis analyzes the literati writing in The Scholars with an approach combined with close reading, text analysis and application of critical theory. It makes a comprehensive exploration of life orientation and shaping strategy of literati figures represented in the novel. This thesis mainly focuses on the following questions: how do literati make their life orientations and self-affirmation through the interactions with historical and geographical environments? How do they determine their ways of life and try to stick to them? How do they recognize themselves and the situation they are facing? What kind of attempts they have made to construct their images? As one of those literati, what are the author Wu Jingzi’s real concerns by writing literati figures and their stories? With a genre of novel, The Scholars has the advantages to represent literati activities in vivid scenarios, which makes the interactions of environments and the literati figures much more obvious. Therefore, this thesis chooses to discuss the above question from three different dimensions: historical models, spatial environments and life experience. As such, a coordinate axis consist of these three dimensions has been set up, which makes it possible to observe the diversity of choices and their final results of the literati figures in the novel. This Thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter is “Introduction.” It states that this research is inspired by the writing feature of The Scholars, which particularly focuses on the career of literati. The second chapter is “The Pursuit of Historical Model and Its Failure”. Following the historical clues inside of the novel, this chapter explores literati’s pursuits of historical models and the outcomes in two sections: first is “The Ideal Confucian Literati Models with Participation in the Society and Its Variation,” second is “Other Role Models and Their Deviations besides the Participation in the Society and the Eagerness of Being an Official.” The third chapter is “The Construction of Home and the Adjustment in the Travel.” Adopting the conceptions from humanistic geography, this chapter observes how literati make self-orientations and construct self-images during the interaction with the space around them. It includes two parts: first is “Place, Home and Affiliation” and second is “Travel, Knowledge and Identity.” The forth chapter is “The Misfortune and Suffering in the Lifetime.” Instead of the relatively outside clues of history and space as stated in the former chapters, this chapter focuses mainly on the narrative plots and settings of the life of literati characters. It consists with three parts: “Disaster,” “Illness” and “Death,” which give a comprehensive exploration of the influences on identity constructions brought by these misfortunes as well as the diverse response made by literati in the novel. The final chapter is “Conclusion,” which concludes the main points as discussed in the previous chapters and demonstrates the value of this research. This thesis follows three clues to observe the self-orientation and shaping of literati, whose approach is quite different from conventional researches. It provides a new prospective to this novel and expands the research possibilities. Especially the spatial and suffering experience, which can be rarely seen in the previous research, play an important role in literati’s self-orientation and identity shaping. This thesis discovers the author’s strong concentration on the problem of literati’s life orientations and shaping strategies. In this thesis, literati’s self-orientation is not limited to their career selections or the preference of officialdom or seclusion; in fact, more discussions are based on the touch of the inner world of literati, which presents the different choices made by literati: following ones’ heart to resisting the disturbance from the outside world, or adapting oneself to the environment, or a complicated combination of both. On the discussion of shaping strategy, this thesis implies that literati, as subjects, take advantages of existed resources such as historic concepts, spatial materials, and medical matters to construct their figures in front of other people or themselves. Although under the dialectical thinking of Wu Jingzi those efforts would not be achievable or even deteriorate into irony, the practice itself is much more productive compared to the doomed failure ending. This also raises the possibility of diverse thinking on the attitude towards literati identity as well as the main idea of the novel. By embracing those intentions, readers may get closer to this novel with a better understanding on its real concern to literati and the reality of its age.
Subjects
The Scholars
Literati
Orientation
Shaping
Historical Models
Space
Suffering
Type
thesis
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