Chronology Entry
Year
1964
Text
Yuan, Kejia. Ying mei yi shi liu xiao shuo ping shu [ID D30387].
Tao Jie : The essay makes a careful study of The sound and the fury and As I lay dying by William Faulkner, Ulysses by James Joyce and To the lighthouse and The waves by Virginia Woolf. In the concluding section, Yuan Kejia labels the stream-of-consciousness fiction as "a literary product of the declining bourgeoisie in the West", and mentions As I lay dying and its interior monologues as a good example of "the psychological reflection of the declinging bourgeoisie that is divorced from reality and therefore afraid of confronting it". He severely criticizes stream-of-consciousness novelists for writing about "dreams, sex, madness, and nonconsciousness" which "are but expressions of the perverted psychology and low taste of a decadent class" and which have "power to corrupt the people's minds and their militant will." Despite the political jargon, Yuan makes a correct and objective interpretation of The sound and the fury and As I lay dying. Some of his arguments – such as the stream of consciousness as the best technique to depict the spiritual decadence of the Compsons ; the decline of the Compsons as represented by Benjy's idiocy, Quentin's suicide, and Jason's greed ; the complexity of psychological reaction to experience as reflected in the different characters in As I lay dying ; Addie's distress about the disjunction between words and reality and Anse's belief in abstraction – are still valid twenty-five years later. Although the author criticizes Faulkner for making Dilsey "more slavish than rebellious" and remarks that "it is incredible that this old woman should be so hardworking and so devoted to the white masters that have been exploiting her for years, he stresses the fact that "Faulkner took part in the 1951 campaign to protect a black man called Willie McGee and denounced the racists in the South in 1955 and opposed segregation in American schools", to show that Faulkner was not so "reactionary" as James Jyce or so "conservative" as Virginia Woolf.
Jin Di : Yuan criticized Ulysses by James Joyce for its 'nihilist, philistine and pornographic tendencies', and denied its artistic values as well.
Tao Jie : The essay makes a careful study of The sound and the fury and As I lay dying by William Faulkner, Ulysses by James Joyce and To the lighthouse and The waves by Virginia Woolf. In the concluding section, Yuan Kejia labels the stream-of-consciousness fiction as "a literary product of the declining bourgeoisie in the West", and mentions As I lay dying and its interior monologues as a good example of "the psychological reflection of the declinging bourgeoisie that is divorced from reality and therefore afraid of confronting it". He severely criticizes stream-of-consciousness novelists for writing about "dreams, sex, madness, and nonconsciousness" which "are but expressions of the perverted psychology and low taste of a decadent class" and which have "power to corrupt the people's minds and their militant will." Despite the political jargon, Yuan makes a correct and objective interpretation of The sound and the fury and As I lay dying. Some of his arguments – such as the stream of consciousness as the best technique to depict the spiritual decadence of the Compsons ; the decline of the Compsons as represented by Benjy's idiocy, Quentin's suicide, and Jason's greed ; the complexity of psychological reaction to experience as reflected in the different characters in As I lay dying ; Addie's distress about the disjunction between words and reality and Anse's belief in abstraction – are still valid twenty-five years later. Although the author criticizes Faulkner for making Dilsey "more slavish than rebellious" and remarks that "it is incredible that this old woman should be so hardworking and so devoted to the white masters that have been exploiting her for years, he stresses the fact that "Faulkner took part in the 1951 campaign to protect a black man called Willie McGee and denounced the racists in the South in 1955 and opposed segregation in American schools", to show that Faulkner was not so "reactionary" as James Jyce or so "conservative" as Virginia Woolf.
Jin Di : Yuan criticized Ulysses by James Joyce for its 'nihilist, philistine and pornographic tendencies', and denied its artistic values as well.
Mentioned People (3)
Faulkner, William
(New Albany, Miss. 1897-1962 Byhalia, Miss.) : Schriftsteller, Nobelpreisträger
.
.
Joyce, James
(Dublin 1882-1941 Zürich) : Irischer Schriftsteller
Yuan, Kejia
(Cixi, Zhejiang 1921-2008) : Professor of English and American Literature, Research Institute of Foreign Literature, Übersetzer, Schriftsteller, Dichter
Subjects
Literature : Occident : Great Britain
/
Literature : Occident : Ireland
/
Literature : Occident : United States of America
Documents (2)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1990 | Tao, Jie. Faulkner's short stories and novels in China. In : Faulkner and the short story. Ed. by Evans Harrington and Ann J. Abadie. (Jackson : University of Mississippi Press, 1992). (Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, 1990). | Publication / Faul5 |
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| 2 | 2001 | Jin, Di. Shamrock and chopsticks : James Joyce in China : a tale of two encounters. Foreword by Weldon Thornton ; ed. with supporting essays by Robert Kellogg. (Hong Kong : City University of Hong Kong Press, 2001). S. 25. | Publication / JoyJ47 |
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