Weaving Her Own Myths – A Preliminary Study on the >Escape Mechanisms< in Doolittle's Mythological Poems [编织自己的神话-杜利特尔神话诗中>逃避机制<初探], Master thesis, English Language and Literature, Yunnan Normal University, Kunming, Yunnan, China 2009 [application of Fromm's theories to art].

  • 希尔达•杜利特尔是享誉20世纪美国文坛的著名意象主义诗人,早年的诗歌短小硬朗,生动地诠释了意象派的创作原则,后期诗风有所改变,带有神秘主义倾向,显示出对改写古希腊神话经久不衰的浓厚兴趣。本文试用著名美国精神分析心理学家埃里克•弗洛姆有关逃避机制的概念,从心理学角度来解读杜利特尔在诗歌中一再抒发的对逃离现实的渴望。弗洛姆在其名著《逃离自由》中指出:虽然人类对自由有着很强烈的渴望并且现代人所获得的自由通常被认为是人类社会的一大进步。可是随着现代意义上自由的获得也使人们从那些给予他们安全感和归属感的纽带中脱离出来。并且随着个人力量的不断增长,个体独自面对世界时的孤独感和恐惧感也随之产生并不断加剧。人们常常会感到不安全,无助,怀疑,孤独,甚至恐惧。为了摆脱孤独感和恐惧感,人们试图去逃离现实。这便是弗洛姆所说的现代人>逃避自由<的心理机制。弗罗姆提出多种逃避的方法,并认为其中唯一积极的方法就是通过自发的创造性劳动,将独立的、自我充分发展的个体重新和世界联系起来。杜利特尔在其坎坷的人生中便经历了这样的心理历程。她在自我个性发展的过程中受到种种压抑而孤独,因为孤独而逃离现实,通过想象进入诗的境界,在诗歌创作中构筑自己的精神世界,由此获得精神上的自由,实现了她的人生价值—追求真与美,追求妇女平等、追求信仰自由、追求爱情自由、追求诗歌创作的自由。杜利特尔在诗歌中创造了丰富的世界,在精神上完成了由孤独无助到自由的转变,实现了自我价值的升华。本文分为六部分。第一部分是导论,简要地介绍了杜利特尔的生平和她的主要作品以及她诗歌的主要特点。第二部分是文献综述,简要地介绍了国内外学者对杜利特尔诗歌的研究状况。第三部分是全文的理论框架,扼要介绍了弗洛姆心理逃离机制的相关理论和观点。第四部分结合诗人的生平经历,简要分析了杜利特尔逃离现实的原因及其逃离的心理动机。第五部分重点探讨了杜利特尔如何通过神话诗的创作获得自由,并实现精神升华。第六部分是结论,作者简要地总结了全文,并指出杜利特尔的逃离是一种积极主动的自我选择,她最终通过神话诗的创作重新获得了精神自由。
  • Hilda Doolittle [HD] is an American poet, best known for her association with the early 20th century imagist poets. At the start of her career, she wrote her short and concise poems which best demonstrated the principles of Imagism. But after the 1920s, HD gradually abandoned the imagist principles and turned to accommodate her life-long interest in occultism and mysticism and the tendency of recasting Greek myths. In her later poems, she showed a strong desire to escape from the real life. This desire, which coincides with >Mechanism of Escape<, a concept proposed by Erich Fromm, an internationally renowned psychoanalyst, aroused my academic interest in the study. In the light of Fromm's theory, I'd like to interpret HD's >escape< as is displayed in her poems from a psychoanalytical perspective. In his famous work Escape from Freedom, Fromm argues that although human beings have a deep longing for freedom and modern individualistic freedoms are typically considered an advance over pre-modern and traditional societies, these freedoms are also a curse: simultaneously he is also freed from those ties which used to give him security and a feeling of belonging. He is overwhelmed with a sense of his individual nothingness and helplessness. The pursuit of freedom for human beings ends psychologically in insecurity, powerlessness, doubt, solitude, isolation and fear. In order to overcome fear and loneliness, man has to escape. Fromm calls this >Mechanism of Escape< and suggests several ways to escape. But there is only one way that can lead to >positive freedom< and attain security, individuality and identity: it's identical with the full realization of the individual's potentialities, together with his ability to create something actively and spontaneously. Upon examining HD's life experience, poems and letters, I find that HD experienced the same process as Fromm argues. HD wanted to seek freedom, to keep her individuality, but the realistic world confined her. Freedom and understanding for her, ended eventually in solitude, isolation and fear. In order to seek positive freedom and keep her own individuality, she intentionally chose to escape into her mythic poetic world. She created an idealistic world through her writing of mythic poems and thus fulfilled spiritual freedom and self-realization-realizing the pursuit of beauty and truth, the pursuit of women's equality, the pursuit of the freedom of belief, the pursuit of the freedom of love and pursuit of the freedom of creation. HD created a rich world in her mythic poetry and fulfilled her spiritual transcendence and gained the positive freedom. This thesis is divided into six chapters.– The first chapter gives an introduction to HD's life and her major works.– The second chapter presents a literature review, in which I shall briefly report the international and domestic study on HD and her works, especially those that bear strong relevance to my study.– The third chapter offers the theoretical framework of the whole thesis, in which I shall expound Fromm's psychoanalytical theory of >Mechanism of Escape<.– And in the fourth chapter, I shall illustrate the factors that caused HD to escape and point out that it is these factors that relate her poems to Fromm's psychoanalytical theory of >Mechanism of Escape<.– In the fifth chapter, I shall focus on the process of HD's spiritual transcendence in her mythic poetry world.– The sixth chapter is the conclusion of my paper, in which I try to outline the major points of my thesis that HD's escape is her intentional and active choice and through her spontaneous mythic poetry creation, she achieved her spiritual freedom in her mythic poetic world.

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Metadaten
Author:Yufen Li
Document Type:Dissertations
Language:Chinese
Year of first Publication:2009
Release Date:2014/01/28
Format:no copy existent / keine Kopie vorhanden
IdNo:Li_Yufen_2009
Writings about Erich Fromm (Secondary Literature):Dissertations / Dissertationen
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Dissertations / Dissertationen
Licence (German):no access / nicht zugänglich
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