Alienation in William Somerset Maugham’s Short Stories [威廉•萨默塞特•毛姆短篇小说中的异化], Master thesis, English Language and Literature Hunan University, Changsha, Hunan, China 2015 [application of Fromm's theories to art].

  • 本文主要运用了埃里希•弗洛姆对马克思劳动异化的阐述和发展形成的异化理论,分析了毛姆短篇小说中三种异化形态,为其短篇小说的研究提供了一个较为新颖的角度。本文从三个方面重点分析毛姆的十个短篇小说文本:《雨》和《教堂堂守》体现了宗教的伪善和对人性的压迫,说明人类创造的上帝反而成为主宰人的力量,使的人与上帝的关系产生了异化;人际关系的异化表现在三个方面,其中《午餐》表现了对异化的绅士风度的盲目推崇让人与人之间的交往变得肤浅而虚伪,《马金托什》体现了殖民制度下的共生关系充满矛盾冲突,而毛姆多个关于爱情和婚姻的短篇,例如《红毛》、《被毁掉的人》、《策略婚姻》、《灵机一动》和《上校夫人》等则反映出当代西方社会爱情和婚姻的功利性;《蒙德拉哥勋爵》和《池》体现了人与自身的异化与外在环境的关系,表明无论是在资本主义蓬勃发展的西方还是在处于殖民统治下的原始东方,种族歧视以及金钱和权力至上的观念无孔不入,人被种种欲望所驱使,泯灭了其自然天性,对自由的追寻、对精神家园的向往最终化为泡影,只能以死亡来逃避完全异化的命运。本文最后得出结论,毛姆对异化的深刻体验在其短篇小说中有着充分体现,冷峻客观的笔调之下是对人类生存困境的深切关注,他对恶人的同情更是体现了他对人性的歌颂和对异化社会的叛逆。
  • This thesis mainly applies Erich Fromm’s ideas of alienation, which formed by his elaboration and development of Marx’s alienation of labor, to analyze three forms of alienation, including man’s alienation from God, alienation of interpersonal relationship and man’s self-alienation, in Maugham’s short stories, which offers a comparatively new perspective for the study of those stories. This thesis focuses on ten of Maugham’s short stories in three aspects: >Rain< and >The Verger< reflected the hypocrisy of religion and its oppression over humanity, that is, the God created by man became a power dominating man in turn, resulting in man’s alienation from God; alienation of interpersonal relationship was manifested in three aspects, among which >The Luncheon< reflected the blind advocating of alienated gentlemanliness led to shallow and hypocritical interpersonal communication, >Mackintosh< reflected symbiotic relationship under colonial administration was full of conflict, and Maugham’s plenty of stories about love and marriage, such as >Red<, >Flotsam and Jetsam<, >A Marriage of Convenience<, >The Creative Impulse<, and >The Colonel’s Lady<, reflected the utilitarian of love and marriage in contemporary western society; >Lord Mountdrago< and >The Pool< reflected the relationship between man’s alienation from himself and external environment, indicating whether in the western society of flourishing capitalism or in the primitive east under colonial rule, racial discrimination and money and power worship were all-pervasive, thus, man, driven by all sorts of desires, lost his nature, and his pursuit of freedom ended in failure and the wish for a spiritual home were disillusioned, therefore only by death could he get rid of alienation. This thesis concludes that Maugham’s profound sense of alienation has a sufficient manifestation in his short stories. Under the guise of unfeeling and objective tone there is his deep concern for man’s existential predicament and his sympathy with the evil further reveals his eulogy of humanity and rebellion against the alienated society. [Author’s translation]

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Metadaten
Author:Li Jiang
Document Type:Dissertations
Language:Chinese
Year of first Publication:2015
Release Date:2020/11/03
Format:no copy existent / keine Kopie vorhanden
IdNo:Jiang_Li_2015
Writings about Erich Fromm (Secondary Literature):Dissertations / Dissertationen
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Dissertations / Dissertationen
Licence (German):
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