中西方文学作品中的文化差异

Abstract
Both China and western countries have long literary history and created many famous literary works, which cover history, society, culture, economy, political and some many aspects. Literature and culture are not only mutually independent but also closely connected; not only have differences but also have coherence; not only mutually restrict but also mutually influenced. It is quite significant and essential to clearly understand the relationship between culture and literature. In particular, understanding the relationship of Chinese culture and western culture is the basement of analyzing differences between Chinese literature and western literature.
Key words: cultural differences; Chinese literature; western literature
中英两国都具有悠久的文学历史，也产生了很多影响世界文坛的作品，而这些作品涵盖了两国历史、社会、文化、经济、政治等方方面面，这给我们从文学作品来分析两国文化的差异提供了坚实的基础。

文学作品与文化的关系,既相互独立,又密切联系,既有差异性, 又有一致性, 既相互制约,又相互影响、相互渗透。

明确认识文学作品与文化关系的基本理论具有十分重要的意义。

尤其，了解中西方文化与文学作品之间的关系为研究中西方文学差异提供了坚实的基础。

关键词：文化差异；中国文学；西方文学
Analysis of Cultural Differences on Chinese and Western
Literature
Introduction
1 The relationship between culture and literature Nowadays, the research and study of culture is one of the most popular topics in the field of foreign language. There is never no a universal definition of culture. As a matter of fact, the content of culture can be flexible and changeable. To the larger extent, it can be defined as all of these physical wealth and spiritual wealth; while to the smaller extent, culture can be referred to every behavior and speech in daily life. It can be said that culture has penetrated in every aspect in human beings’ social life. Literary works are writers’ highly refining and sublimation of social life, which bear and concentrate many elements of national culture. Therefore, greater attention should be paid to these figures and thoughts which appear repeatedly and are special and different to Chinese culture when appreciating, analyzing and translating foreign literary works. In contrast, the improvement of cultural consciousness has promoting effects to English study. With the understanding of culture of English speaking countries, readers can deep into writers’ thoughts and consciousness, and then readers can make correct and exact comprehension of literary works. This thesis will analyze cultural differences between China and western countries based on the discussion of Chinese literature and western literature.
1.1 The differences between culture and literature
Generally speaking, culture and literary works are two totally different phenomenons. Culture is the complex of goods, techniques, thoughts, costume, tradition, values, beliefs, mentally structure, mode of thinking, mode of feeling, mode of behavior and some other articles which are created and accumulate by human beings. The culture of one country or area can be roles or modes of its members, which is like history, tradition and some other articles with greater stability. Literary work is a kind of
emotional phenomenon, which can create rules and orders beyond the reality and can thoroughly reveal human beings’ essential power and ideal emotional world. Literary works gives figures the experience of life and can arouse readers’emotional resonance so as to provide a piece of habitats for so much blundering soul.
Culture is a huge system which includes physical culture, institutional culture and mental culture; however, literary work is just one of the specific parts of the huge system of culture. Culture can exist with various forms, including the form of every article or phenomenon in nature. The form of literary work is only the unification of literary discourse system and the image system as well as the theme system. The potential power of culture is all-inclusive and too numerous to mention, which concludes all of potential power of articles and phenomenon in the nature. The potential power of literary works mainly includes their functions to move, touch, educate, remind and entertain people. As to the potential power of culture, the character of “ruling”is heavier; while the influencing peculiarity of literary works’potential power is more obvious. The appearance of culture is earlier than literature. In the development of every kind of culture, the national tradition is always holding up the nuclear position; therefore, the development of culture is mainly the accumulation of new articles and phenomenon. The outstanding character of the development of literary works is constant innovation and exceeding in aspects of idea, theme, language, structure, form, emotion, language and so on. To a large extent, the development of literary works depends on the breakthrough of existing cultural values and rules.
1.2 The coherence of culture and literature
Though culture and literature are different in essence, they still have and closing connections to some extent.
From the aspect of their inner meaning and nature, literary work is one of the most vivid, most specific, most through and most active parts in the system of culture.
From the aspect of their extension, culture is the parent-system, while literary work is one of the son-system of it. From the aspect of their structures and patterns of manifestation, literary work has the same patterns of manifestation and similar structure as culture, which make literary work different to other parts of culture. To a typical kind of culture, the literary work which based on it can be regarded as the specific mode of this culture. From the aspect of their appearance and development, both originations of culture and literary works are very ancient. After their appearances, they have existed and developed in the river of human beings’ history hand in hand for a long time. At the very beginning, literature is not considered as the separate existing but only one part of culture. Before Chinese dynasties of Wei and Jin, as well as the 18th of western, literature is regarded as the simple cultural type without any special or exclusive characters.
I n conclusion, literature and culture are not only mutually independent but also closely connected; not only have differences but also have coherence; not only mutually restrict but also mutually influenced. The relationship between culture and literature is significant meaning and value to both culture and literature. On the one hand, the relationship can promote the development, spreading, evaluation of culture. On the other hand, the relationship can enrich the inner meaning and content of literary works; enlarge the volume of literary works; advance meaning, value and taste of literary works; replenish the potential of literary works; increase types of literary works as well as provide tools and forms for the creation of literature. It is quite significant and essential to clearly understand the relationship between culture and literature. In particular, understanding the relationship of Chinese culture and western culture is the basement of analyzing differences between Chinese literature and western literature.
2 Analysis of cultural differences on Chinese and western literature
Since the reforming and opening up, as well as Chinese entering into WTO, the relationship between China and the rest part of the world is becoming increasingly close; what’s more, the communication between China and western world has come into the unprecedented booming situation. However, it is impossible to avoid to cultural conflicts among all series communication. As Lu Xun has mentioned that Chinese culture which is grounded in the civilization of agriculture is fundamentally different to western culture. As one of the significant parts and of western culture and the represent of modern western culture, the cultural differences between Chinese and English are more representative. In addition, English is the international language and English speaking countries are all over the world, which have made the research of cultural differences between Chinese and English becomes increasingly popular in the field of China’s culture.
With respect to differences between Chinese culture and western culture, there have been so many researches in home and abroad from various aspects, of which the one based on Chinese and western literature is not only has practical meaning but also has artistic meaning. Therefore, research based on the literature has gradually become the burgeoning researching method. As we all know that both China and western countries have long literary history, as well as so many influential literary works. These outstanding literary works cover history, society, culture, economy, politics and some other aspects of China and many western countries; therefore, they have incisively and vividly unfolded Chinese culture and western culture. These literary works provide solid basis for researchers to do research about cultural differences between China and western. Thus, the following part will illustrate culture differences between China and western countries based on literary from four aspects.
2.1 Personal privacy
The feudalism absolute monarchy ever existed in China for almost 2000 years, which has brought deep influence to Chinese culture. The feudalism absolute monarchy emphasizes nationalism and collectivism, while pays litter attention to personal interests. Under this background, Chinese culture also stresses patriotic, loyal, and courtesy as well as that people should sacrifice themselves to realize national interests. Therefore, there almost is not the idea of personal privacy in Chinese history. In contrast, the feudalism absolute monarchy did not exist in western society for so long, while the implementation of parliamentarism and system of separation of three powers in some western countries has experienced a relatively long time. For example, in Britain, Constitutional articles of association has definitely formulated that the individual privacy shall not be infringed. Therefore, there are differences between Chinese culture and western culture in the aspect of personal privacy.
For instance, in Lao She’s famous drama----Tea House, the typical dialogue of Wang Ma is “他二爷，给李娃相的那个小媳妇中不中啊”. In addition, Lao Zhang and Lao Wang are also used to talking about their sons’ payment; for example, Lao Wang has ever said that “老张头，你那儿子现在可是吃皇粮扛枪靶子的主了，咱家那个败家的一月那点散碎银子可比不得你家的现大洋哦”. All of these topics are related to personal privacy, including issues of payment, marriage and so on. However, they are often referred to in Chinese people’s daily chat. Another typical example is the main character in Lu Xun’s Kong Yiji, who is always laughed at by others and whose personal privacy is often revealed by others. In another famous work of Lu Xun---- Blessing,when suffered excessive misfortune, Zhang Ma even talks about her silly behavior she has ever done when she is young; in other words, she uncovers the most secret things in her heart thoroughly and totally. It is uneasy to find that under the influence of Chinese traditional culture, not only the public, but also individual does not pay attention to protect personal privacy. In recent years, the blowing up of a large amount of indelicate pictures and videos as well as the incontrollable “Cyber
Manhunt” in the Internet all conform this.
In contrast, in western literature, topics about personal privacy are considered as taboos. In Vanity Fair, when the hero is taking part in a party, he comes up to his playmate of childhood. When they talk about the issue of current situation, James repeatedly asks this guy’s job and finally makes that guy angry, which is because that James’s question has involved other person’s personal privacy. In Mrs. Dalloway, Mrs. Dalloway falls in love with a gentleman----Tom, then she try to ask about the family situation of him from surrounding people. It is worth noting that Mrs. Dalloway only wants to know about Tom and he tries to be more familiar with him; however, even this has also made Tom feel disappointed and decide to leave her. Another representative case is in The Shadow of a Gunman. This novel records an interesting story: Casey and Shawn are best friends, and Casey always wants to introduce a girl to Shawn, while Shawn always put off with any reasons. Finally, Casey gets that Shawn has been married for a long time and he should know nothing about that. Though this story is exaggerated to some extent, it does reveal the fact that western people are quite sensitive about their personal privacy and they always want to protect their personal privacy. From these cases mentioned above, people can find that personal privacy is not allowed to be asked about or be known about by violence in western society; what’s more, the pry desire and curiosity of western people have been controlled strictly all the time. Taking the entertainment circle of Britain for example, there is absolutely no paparazzo there. In addition, British people are used to talking about weather but never talk about payment, marriage, political tendency and some other sensitive personal issues.
2.2 Genetic connection
The patriarchal clan system of Confucianism has made great influence on Chinese people in the history, as a large proportion of Chinese emperors in the feudal society emphasize Confucianism. In Chinese, the system of appellations among relatives
could be the most complicated one all over the world. In contrast, the system of appellations in English is quite simple. For example, men of parents’ generation are all called as uncles and women are aunts. By the way, this great difference does bring big inconvenience in Chinese-English translation. In order to satisfy the requirement of inter-cultural communication, English people even created such words like “brother in law”.
The most typical example is Dream of the Red Chamber. In this novel, the complicated genetic connections of hundreds of characters as well as their appellations always make readers confused. Later generations even worked out charts about four big families’genetic connections in Dream of the Red Chamber, which take over more than ten pages. In a word, Chinese people have greatly influenced by family’s genetic connection and the patriarchal clan system in traditional culture, which can be revealed in Lao She’s another famous work----World Peace. In this novel, the landlord has two sons, of which the younger son is more excellent than the older son no matter in the aspect of temperament or accomplishment. However, when the Kuomintang is forcibly conscripting, the landlord choose to sacrifice the younger son in order to protect the older son just because that the younger son was born by his concubine but the older son is born by his lawful wife. The landlord has ever said in the novel: “大娃子是咱家续香火的，不能让他去”.
2.3 Daily communication
In the aspect of daily communication, there are even greater differences between Chinese culture and western culture. During the daily communication of Chinese people, the speaker usually pays great attention to the listener’s social status and profession. For example, Wang Xiaobo’s novel ----Give New Year’s Greetings creates a character called Mr. Wang, who is a worker in the factory. Mr. Wang requests the vice manager to do something for him; however, the vice manager delays helping him for a long time. Mr. Wang is quite confused for he considers he has performed
perfectly in every detail. Finally, the veteran reminds him that he should not call that guy “vice manager” but should call him “manager” directly. It does take effect after Mr. Wang tried. In the English novel---- Widower’s Houses, in order to suck up to the boss, the widower called him “respectful Jack president”, which causes his colleagues’confusion and dislike, and even the boss feels unease. However, his behavior is quite common in China.
Moreover, Chinese people are used to plus “older”or “younger”before persons’family names so as to represent others’generations or qualifications, such as Older Zhang, Younger Li, Older Wang, and Lao Yang. Titles of such type can be found everywhere in Chinese. In English and American literature, even though there are such figures; however, they are totally different in meaning. For example, in Jane Eyre, when Mikye said: “the Old Jacket, God damn it”, Jane Eyre responds to him quite amazingly and angrily. In this content, “Old Jacket” could have the meaning of devil, for English people are generally afraid of aging. In addition, speech such as “Little Jacket” has meaning of contempt and scorn.
2.4 Meanings of color words
In the aspect of color words, Chinese people and western people have different understanding. The following part will take “red”and “yellow”as examples to illustrate this point.
The color of red has become the dedicated for celebration since ancient times. In Chinese famous drama----The White-haired Girl, a libretto is “扯回了二尺红头绳给我扎起来”, which can reveal Chinese people’s clinging pursuing for the fortune in red. In contrast, in some western literary works, the color of red is the representative of violence and blood. Many western literary works tend to use the color of red when portray scenes of fighting, such as The History of Henry Esmond, Shirley and so on.
In the ancient China, the color of yellow is exclusive used by the empire and some of his families, which is the representative of noble and rights. In some Chinese ancient literary works, the color of yellow is the name of empire and imperial power or authority. For example, in The Burning of Yuan Ming Yuan, when hearing the performer of Chinese opera singing: “大圈圈里套个小圈圈，小圈圈里套个黄圈圈”, Xian Feng Emperor is quite angry and orders to kill all of these performers as he considers that “黄圈圈”is referred to him. However, in western literary works, the color of yellow is usually used to portray timid and cowardly. For instance, in George Eliot, the hero’s pet phrases is that “don not be afraid, he is yellow”, which means that he is so weak that you do not need to be afraid of him.
Conclusion
The phenomenon of culture spread around all the aspects of human beings’ society as well as penetrate in literary works. Cultural differences are the most significant and deepest reasons which lead to differences between Chinese literature and western literature. Therefore, research about cultural differences from the aspect of literature is quite meaningful and functional. So long as paying more attention and efforts to observe and compare, researches about cultural differences between China and western countries can be promoted into a higher stage.
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