University of Alberta Approaching History: The Fictional Worlds of Ha Jin and Yan Geling by Rong Guo A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Comparative Literature ©Rong Guo Spring 2011 Edmonton, Alberta Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission. 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The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 1+1 Canada Examining Committee Jonathan L. Hart Comparative Literature / Department of English & Film Studies, University of Alberta Jenn-Shann Lin East Asian Studies / Comparative Literature, University of Alberta Irene Sywenky Comparative Literature / Department of Modern Languages & Cultural Studies, University of Alberta Massimo Verdicchio Comparative Literature / Department of Modern Languages & Cultural Studies, University of Alberta Robert J. Merrett Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta Shaobo Xie Department of English, University of Calgary Abstract Taken as the two most important overseas Chinese writers, both Ha Jin and Yan Geling left China in the 1980s and attended graduate programs at universities in the United States. Though writing in different languages, Yan mainly in Chinese and Jin in English, they have some characteristics in common. Being away from China has provided them a proper distance to look back at that country and, correspondingly, a unique perspective to appropriate materials relating to the people living in China. Literature and history are always mixed. Though fictions, including historical fictions, cannot be treated as factual reports and do not carry any authority as historical statements, all creative writing offers "insights into the social and intellectual milieu in which the writer lived, and often vivid descriptions of the physical settings as well" (Tosh 67-8). Thus, it should be feasible for readers and critics to approach history, or, in other words, to obtain a historical awareness, through fictional worlds. As a special kind of possible worlds, fictional worlds express various aspects of reality, and consequently, readers can see the shadows or reflections of social reality through explorations in the fictional worlds. As one critic says, except for the names of characters and locations, the reality in a literary work is much more authentic than any narratives in history and politics (Jin Kemu & Yang Jiang; qtd. in Ning Zongyi, par.1; Cao Mingzong, par.8). It is not uncommon, hence, for people to take literary works as windows to explore the history and reality of a society. This dissertation begins with a brief introduction to the theory of possible worlds and speech acts, aiming to provide an ontological landscape of fictions in general and an approach employed to interpret literary texts. The subsequent four chapters focus on two works of Ha Jin and Yan Geling respectively. Through a detailed examination of the four texts, I argue and demonstrate from different perspectives the point that the narratives of these works constitute an alternative account to the dominant official narratives about China and the Chinese people, either by filling in the gaps left by the state narratives, or by offering a counter-narrative to the official master narratives. Undoubtedly, Ha Jin and Yan Geling's works can be studied from different perspectives, but this dissertation focuses more on their historical dimension. This study will aim to provide some examples and insights that will help with future mapping of overseas Chinese literature. Preface This preface is partly in response to suggestions the external examiner had concerning the theoretical framework and the reading practice in this thesis. My dissertation begins with the reading of literary works, during which I developed a strong interest in writings about the contemporary past of China. I cannot help but ask the following questions: is it legitimate to take literary texts as accesses to history? How should one treat and define fictional worlds? Therefore, when I read about possible world theory, I considered its argument about the correlation between fiction and reality, and I was happy to find Lubomir Dolezel's clarification about the bidirectional exchange between fiction and actuality. According to Dolezel, the author draws on the actual world in the creation of a literary fictional world, while the reader can access the fictional worlds through semiotic channels (21). Dolezel further asserts, "The essence of fiction is to be located in the nature of the speech acts performed when telling or writing a narration" (10). For this very reason, I have included a section about speech act theory. In my thesis, the theory of possible/fictional worlds is introduced from an ontological perspective while speech act theory is approached from the aspects of function. Both are related, in different aspects, to my thinking about the literary works covered in this dissertation. In his book, Speech Acts in Literature (2001), J. Hillis Miller writes, "Speech acts in literature" can mean speech acts that are uttered within literary works, for example promises, lies, excuses, declarations, imprecations, requests for forgiveness, apologies, pardons, and the like said or written by the characters or by the narrator in a novel. It can also mean a possible performative dimension of a literary work taken as a whole. Writing a novel may be a way of doing things with words. (1; emphasis added) In his Literature as Conduct (2005), Miller reiterates his argument and further identifies the role of writers and readers in the cooperation of "literature as conduct." According to Miller, the author's act of writing is an act that takes the form of putting things in this way or that, while the reader, in acts of teaching, criticism, or informal comment, may do things by putting a reading into words (Literature as Conduct 2). I strongly agree with him and take his approach as the theoretical basis of my interpretation. Borrowing from his idea of "the way literature may conduct its readers to believe or to behave in new ways," I try to explore the relations of literature to conduct by reading Ha Jin and Yan Geling's literary works, discerning what the two authors seek to convey by addressing myself to their tenets or politics of writing (Literature as Conduct 2). I take from Miller the notion that speech acts in literature can "mean a possible performative dimension of a literary work taken as a whole" and that "[p]erformative signs (including picture, ... written language, and music) masking as constative assertions generate what we call ideology" (Speech Acts 1; Literature as Conduct 7). Here, I reiterate this to emphasize the framework of the relation between the theory of my framework and the assumption that the novels that I analyze in the subsequent chapters constitute these kinds of speech acts. However, in theory and practice, I also differ from Miller, who mainly analyzes the speech acts of the narrators and characters whereas I take the whole literary work as a performative speech act/utterance, in which the constative dimension is the story of the fictional world, while the performative dimension is what I attempt to read between the lines. Hence, my analysis works mainly on two levels: the constative level, the characters and narrators in the fictional world; and the performative level, the act of the author's writing and my act of reading. Take my reading of Yan Geling's The Ninth Widow as an example. First, I describe the female protagonist's unique view of history, analyzing the characteristics of her innocence, comparing her with other alienated characters in the novel.