Тема: ‘Bequeath to death your numbness’: story telling as healing in Pearl Buck's The Exile

Лектор:  Rob Hardy 

Модератор: Не Вэй (NIE Wei)

Время проведения: 28 апреля, 16:30-18:00

Место проведения: Кампус Сунцзян, Корпус 4, ауд.303

Содержание лекции:

Wong Hiu Wing has argued that Maxine Hong Kingston''s The Woman Warrior and Amy Tan''s The Joy Luck Club are both narratives designed to heal the wounds suffered by those caught between China and America: both the first generation Americans of Chinese origin who wrote the novels and for whom America was home, and their immigrant Chinese mothers for whom America, although they lived there, was certainly not.  The pain recorded by Kingston and Tan - of mothers and daughters caught between countries and  cultures and between memory and the present - connects with  the pain in The Exile, Pearl Buck''s biography of her mother, which is like a mirror image of Tan''s and Kingston''s books.  It was written by a daughter (for whom China was home) about her American mother, who had first entered China as a young woman with her missionary husband in 1880, who died there in 1921, and for whom China never became home. If Kingston and Tan''s novels record the great influence of Chinese attitudes to family, culture and religion (conveyed by their mothers), on themselves, the story tellers,  Pearl Buck, in her biography, records the equally great influence of American attitudes to family, culture and religion on herself, also conveyed by her mother. In telling this story it is as if Pearl Buck  - like Kingston and Tan - was motivated by the need to find healing for both her mother and herself. What this might mean is the subject of this lecture.

Биография лекионера:

Rob Hardy holds a BA from Cambridge University and MA and PhD degrees from Cardiff University.  A substantial part of his working life was spent at The Bournemouth and Poole College, UK, where his final post was Assistant Principal for Higher Education. He has also taught at Bournemouth University and for the Open University, UK.  His publications includePsychological and Religious Narratives in Iris Murdoch’s Fiction (2000) and a chapter in Iris Murdoch and Morality (2010), as well as articles on the novelists Paul Bailey and John Stroud. His recently published book is Wild Yearning: Men, Sex and the Goddess - a theme in D.H. Lawrence, Dion Fortune and Ted Hughes.