About the concrete embodiment of psychological realism in Oates' works, the full text is as follows:
Abstract: In modern and contemporary European and American literary schools, psychological realism occupies an important literary position. Psychological realism is developed on the basis of the combination of modernist literature and realistic literature. In psychological realism works, psychological realism and psychological realism are a pair of organic unified appearances. Oates is one of the representatives of psychological realism, and it is of great practical significance to study his works for the internationalization of China academic circles.
Joyce? Carol. Joyce Carol Oates (1938-), a famous American novelist, has been active in American literature since 1963 published his first collection of short stories, The North Gate. So far, he has published more than 40 novels and many short stories, poems, plays, essays and literary works. 1970, the masterpiece "They" won the National Book Award.
Oates experienced the periods of realism and modernism in the history of novel development. After combining and absorbing the essence of traditional novels, Oates followed the development trend of the times, organically combined modernism with realism, developed psychological realism, and began to engage in the creation of psychological realism. Psychological realism in Oates' novels is a literary form that has a great influence on the history of western literature. Studying Oates' creation can explore the development of China literature and promote the internationalization of China literature on the basis of understanding world literature.
The Historical Development of Psychological Realism Literature
Psychological realism, as a literary school with far-reaching influence on the west, has been slowly developed by many literary masters. The earliest literary expression of psychological realism is the sentimental literature of Richardson, Rousseau, Stein and other masters. The development of sentimental literature is the earliest literary expression of psychological realism, which laid the foundation for the development of psychological realism. The development from sentimental literature to psychological novels is an important milestone in the development of psychological realism. The representative figures of psychological novels are Flaubert, Stendhal and Dostoevsky, and psychological novels have played an important role in promoting the development of psychological realism.
It was at the end of 19 that psychological realism really became a literary school and was recognized by critics. James made a systematic theoretical explanation of psychological realism literature. Henry. James not only made a systematic theoretical explanation of psychological realism, but also made conscious creative practice, so he was called the pioneer of psychological realism. After him, psychological realism reached its most glorious period through Salinger, Oates and Updike.
Second, the concrete embodiment of psychological realism in Oates' works.
1 The embodiment of psychological realism in My Sister, My Love
My Sister, My Love is the most representative of Oates' many works and belongs to Oates' novel series. My sister, my love is based on 1996, the murder of Remsen, which shocked the United States. The novel My Sister, My Love mainly tells the story of a 6-year-old child star who was killed. Job bennett. Remsen was famous for taking part in beauty contests, but he was killed in the basement of his home soon after. The case has never been solved in everyone's anxious waiting, and finally became a major unsolved case in the United States at that time. According to this true story, Oates described the psychological course of the victim's brother skyler, which is the epitome of the whole social tragedy.
By describing the mental journey of his brother skyler, the novel reveals the real situation of American society in 1990s. At that time, American society was all pursuers of interests, and interests had become the whole of life. This pursuit of fame and fortune has also caused many family tragedies, and the children in the family are the victims of this generation of family tragedies, because the moral decline of adults, greed for vanity and neglect of children have caused serious psychological harm to children. During this period, children in many families have become tools for parents to pursue fame and fortune, completely ignoring their growth. At this stage, children are an important growth period. Because of the long-term lack of care and love, children will eventually have mental illness. Many children have to rely on drugs to maintain their lives, and more serious children have to be treated for mental illness.
In Oates' My Sister, My Love, Oates adopted? Internal focus? Skyler's psychological activity is the main way of description, and skyler also acts as the narrator in the novel, connecting all the plots of the novel through skyler's narration. When describing the plot, Oates chose the way of crossing the present and the past, and by inserting some difficult paragraphs and sentences into the narrative, he expressed skyler's long-term tension and depression in skyler because of skyler's parents' behavior.
2 the embodiment of psychological realism in That Autumn
Generally speaking, what do we tell? Time? Is an effective extension line formed by the accumulation of scenes, that is? Time and space? But this is not absolute time in the traditional philosophical sense. This is a continuous state, and each state is closely related to the future and the past, which is what we are talking about now? Psychological time? . It not only follows the characteristics of objective time, but also has strong initiative, and has certain boundaries with the past, present and future. It can choose to go back, jump, switch and splice, but it is easy to lose. Generally speaking, in order to grasp the psychological time in time and quickly, the screenwriter needs to grasp the character characteristics and psychological phenomena effectively and accurately. In the novel "That Autumn", it not only further rejected the writer as a? Know everything? This paper evaluates and intervenes some characters and their thoughts in the novel from the perspective of God, and vividly analyzes the character characteristics of the characters. So That Autumn is a very successful novel, which is also the main reason for its popularity.
Nowadays, the marriage of traditional families has encountered various crises, and marriage and moral binding force have been ignored by more and more people. The social problems caused by this situation are very worrying. Oates further reveals the theme of the novel with the help of the character Benjamin. He not only humiliated Eleanor, but also told his own experience, further exposing Eleanor's unforgettable experience? False love. The so-called strong feelings in the article are actually only evidence that both men and women have violated family ethics. In the novel, Oates does not criticize this third party, but takes her as the object of care. When highlighting the theme, there is no lack of compassion that female writers should have.
Eleanor described in the work is not only a beautiful girl who broke into someone's house and cheated on her, but also a mistress who is afraid of loneliness. When she was old and faded, she was abandoned by others. At the same time, the poet who became famous overnight was abandoned at the age of 63 and was severely hit by reality. Compared with traditional novels, psychological realism novels are more likely to depict some concrete realistic characters, and the character characteristics depicted in traditional novels are likely to be related to the background of the times at that time, while psychological realism novels are more likely to highlight the true characters of some characters and further depict their personality characteristics and hobbies.
3 the embodiment of psychological realism in Cousins
Cousins is Oates' masterpiece describing psychological reality in recent years, and the whole article adopts epistolary style. The story mainly tells the correspondence between two elderly women who are nearly sixty years old in the past year. The specific plot of the whole story is as follows: Frieda, a professor of biological anthropology at the University of Chicago? Morgenstern recently published a meeting record about the concentrated life of Jews in girlhood, which attracted many people's attention and set off a frenzy in society. This book came across by an old lady. Through the description of Professor Morgenstein's pursuit of Jewish race in the novel, Rebecca guessed that the other person was her long-lost cousin. Over the years, she has been thinking about her cousin, often writing to her and recalling the past with her, hoping that one day the sisters can get to know each other. However, Professor Morgenstein turned her down cruelly. Finally, Rebecca's insistence touched Frida, and they began to talk to each other about the bitterness and desolation of their childhood. Frida began to accept this elder sister gradually. When the two decided to know each other, Rebecca suffered from an incurable disease. Although the ending of this novel is not satisfactory, it expresses the author's inner feelings and dissatisfaction with some social realities to some extent.
Although this novel is not very long, its writing skills are unique. Every sentence needs careful consideration by the author. These 29 letters look like ordinary letters, but they profoundly reveal the catastrophe brought by the Holocaust to the Jewish nation and destroy many happy families. The form of letters used in the whole novel is divided into two protagonists, which provides a narrative space without any interference, so that readers can further infer each other's psychological changes and emotional changes according to the tone of the writer when reading these letters. In addition, Oates' dual narrative writing technique makes the plot development of this novel more complicated. Cousins tell each other what happened in the past in a cross way, in order to further tell each other? A massacre? The event laid a solid foundation and entered layers of spatial interpretation, which invisibly deepened the reading depth of the work. On the surface, the novel tells the story of two sisters trying to recognize their relatives, but in fact, the deeper meaning is to reflect the harm caused by the Jewish massacre to many families, leaving an indelible shadow on the two sisters psychologically and physically.
Innovation and breakthrough of psychological realism expression skills in Oates' novels
Looking back on the development of psychological realism novels, the author thinks that Oates has made great contributions to psychological realism novels. The main contributions are as follows:
(1) further enriches the writing techniques and skills of psychological novels, and draws on many modern factors from modernism and contemporary works, such as symbols, images, absurdity, changing perspectives and so on. The author thinks that the most surprising thing about Oates' novels is that Oates is unique in readers' visual experience and layout design. For example, in Fox Fire: Confessions of a Girl Gang and Waterfall, Oates uses bold characters to grasp the inner changes of the characters. In the novel My Sister, My Love, footnotes are widely used, decorated with many bold characters, and the fonts are of different sizes. At the same time, some asterisks are used as markers, which is somewhat similar to the style of tabloid media.
(2) in the choice of object description, Henry? What James knows is basically people in his own circle. Zweig likes to analyze the extreme personality of others, but the people she cares about are ordinary people. The greed, hypocrisy, loneliness and stubbornness of these people are shared by everyone in contemporary society, and they have all experienced and experienced it. Her insight into the spiritual world of modern people and her observation of contemporary people's psychological state are not only in-depth but also very accurate.
(3) Oates likes to get inspiration from some ancient stories and genres, and write these ancient stories into contemporary stories. Most of her short stories are written by famous novelists with their own imagination and according to the characters' personalities. In any case, Oates has played a great role in the breakthrough of psychological realism and performance skills. She is a writer who dares to break through tradition and achieve self-transcendence. When she narrates in words, she doesn't simply describe people and things with skilled skills, but constantly innovates new creative skills to achieve self-transcendence. In her novels, in order to create a dramatic effect for novels, she will choose different characters and different environments according to the needs of novel development, and organically combine all related characters, environments and events through her skillful creative skills. This creative way is fully reflected in her later work "The Great Waterfall".
Four conclusions