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追溯当代美国的精神旅程——文化视阈下的《圣洁百合》研究.docx

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AcknowledgementsUpon the final completion of my M.A. thesis entitled “Tracing the Spiritual Odyssey of Contemporary America—---A Study of In the Beauty of the Lilies in a Cultural Perspective”, I wish to express my sincere gratitude to those who have offered help to me.First and foremost, I am grateful to my supervisor Professor ***. During my three-year study as a graduate student, it is his conscientious scholarship and academic spirit that have inspired me to go forward. His insightful views gave me inspiration from the selection of the topic to the completion of the thesis. He not only lent valuable materials on Updike study to me, but also spared no efforts to read and revise my thesis.Second, my appreciation also goes to Professor *** and Associate Professor *** as they provided precious suggestions on the framework of the thesis. At the same time, I am thankful to all those professors and teachers at the *** who have taught me because their profound knowledge and enlightening lectures have enriched my study and advanced my cognitive competence.Last but not the least, I need to thank my parents and classmates who have given me support and encouragement during my process of writing the thesis.致谢在我的毕业论文“追溯当代美国的精神旅程──文化视阈下的《圣洁百合》研究”完成之际，我希望向所有给予过我帮助的人表示衷心的感谢。

首先，我要感谢我的导师***教授在我的研究生三年学习生活中，***严谨的治学态度和学术精神激励着我在学术研究中勤勉向前从我的论文选题，到论文成形，***独特的见解启发着我思考他不仅将他的一些珍贵的文献资料借给我看，还不厌其烦地阅读、修改我的毕业论文其次，还要感谢***和***，他们对于完善此论文框架提出了宝贵意见同时，我要向所有在外语研究方面教导过我的教授们和老师们表达诚挚的感谢，是他们渊博的知识和精彩的授课充实着我的学习，提高了自己的认知层次最后，感谢父母的支持和同学们对我的鼓励，他们在整个论文写作的过程中一直支持着我AbstractJohn Updike is one of the most significant and productive American writers in the late twentieth century. Distinguished at depicting the family lives of middle class, he reveals the spiritual and moral conditions of modern Americans and the social conditions in America in his works. Published in 1996, the novel In the Beauty of the Lilies is his seventeenth novel, showing deep concern to the interactive impact of American religious faith and popular culture in the 20th century. Based on the narrative of the four generations of the Clarence family, this thesis is intended to trace the spiritual journey of contemporary America, and to present the challenges brought about by the changes in American religious beliefs and the rise of popular culture represented by movies.The first generation Wilmot, a priest, affected by the new ideas and the mass media, steps down from the pulpit. From then on, his faith begins to sway, and no longer believes in God. In turn, he goes into the cinema to seek temporary relief. This symbolizes the decline of religion and the budding of the film industry. Influenced by his father’s loss of faith, Teddy is discouraged from God, but he can’t get relief from the film and eventually surrenders to reality. Teddy’s daughter, Essie, is ambitious and believes in God, and attributes her success to God. Essie’s success shows the rise of film industry and the secularization of religion. The fourth generation Clark, who has no religious beliefs, relies on the film to dispose time, and then is immersed in the cult temptation. His death reflects that American youth is living in a desolate spiritual desert and simultaneously illustrates the appeal for sincere faith.By grasping the development of popular culture in this novel, and analyzing the social problems, mode of pensee and solicitude of American society, this thesis aims to analyze the changes of American religious beliefs in the 20th century and explore the spiritual crisis of contemporary people. It can be argued that the contradiction of America between the highly industrialized economy and void spiritual condition is a reflection of the decline of conventional religion and the secularization of religion in general.Key words: John Updike; In the Beauty of the Lilies；popular culture；religious faith；spiritual crisis摘要约翰·厄普代克是二十世纪后半叶美国最重要、最多产的作家之一。

厄普代克的作品以善于描绘当代美国中产阶级家庭生活著称,揭示了当代美国人的精神和道德状况以及美国的社会现状其小说《圣洁百合》发表于1996年，是厄普代克创作的第十七部长篇小说，也是作者对于20世纪美国宗教信仰与大众文化交互影响的深入思考本文以克拉伦斯家族四代人的故事为基础，追溯当代美国的精神历程，试图呈现以电影为代表的美国宗教信仰的变化和大众文化的兴起所带来的挑战第一代威尔莫特牧师受到新思潮和大众媒介的影响，从牧师的讲坛上走下，信仰开始摇摆，从此不再信仰上帝，并走进电影院寻求暂时的解脱这象征着宗教走向衰落及电影萌芽的开始他的儿子特迪受到父亲失去信仰的影响对上帝望而却步，却也未从电影中得到解脱，最终向现实臣服特迪的女儿埃茜颇具野心并且信仰上帝，并把她在好莱坞去的成功归因于上帝的恩惠埃茜的成功象征着电影的崛起以及宗教走向世俗化的趋势第四代埃茜的儿子克拉克，没有宗教信仰的他靠电影排遣时间，并受邪教诱惑深陷其中克拉克的死昭示了美国年轻人正处于精神荒漠状态，同时也说明了小说对真诚信仰的诉求通过把握这部作品中大众文化的发展，分析作品中美国的社会问题，思想方式，人文关怀，本文旨在分析20世纪美国宗教信仰的变化，探寻当代人的精神危机。

可以说，美国在高度工业化的经济和空虚的精神状态之间的矛盾，总体上反映了传统宗教的衰落和宗教的世俗化关键词：约翰·厄普代克;《圣洁百合》；大众文化；宗教信仰；精神危机IIContentsAbstractIChapter 1 Introduction11.1 The Author and the Novel1.2 Literature Review1.3 The Significance and Layout of the ThesisChapter 2 Confrontation: the Wavering of Faith102.1 The Painful Struggle over Faith2.2 The Sense of Escapism to Mass MediaChapter 3 Impact: the Waning of Faith203.1 Wandering between Movie and Faith3.2 Surrendering to RealityChapter 4 Blurring and Merging:the Absence of Faith294.1 The Attainment of Success through Movie4.2 The Privatization of Faith4.3 The Emergence of CultismChapter 5 Conclusion39Bibliography41III目录摘要II1 引言11.1作家作品简介11.2 文献综述31.3研究意义和论文结构72 对峙：信仰的摇摆102.1对信仰的痛苦挣扎102.2从大众媒介中得到解脱153 冲击：信仰的式微203.1徘徊于电影与信仰之间203.2 对现实的臣服254 模糊与融合：信仰的缺失294.1 通过电影获得的成功294.2 信仰的私人化294.3 邪教的出现355 结论39参考文献40IVChapter 1 IntroductionChapter 1 IntroductionJohn Updike (1932-2009) is one of the most famous, productive and most awarded writers in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. Since the 1950s, dozens of novels, poems, commentaries, and short story collections have been published, and altogether he wrote 23 novels. His various works have won numerous awards at home and abroad, including the Pulitzer Prize, the American Book Award, and the National Book Critics Award, which cover all important awards for literary creation in the United States. In the Beauty of the Lilies, published in 1996, is his seventeenth novel. By telling the spiritual changes of four generations of Wilmot family, the novel reflects on the decline of American religious faith and the rise of the popular culture in the 20th century. This thesis aims to explore how the religious faith changes over time and how people’s lives and mentality are influenced by the popular culture.1.1 The Author and the NovelReligious beliefs are the subject of many of Updike’s works, such as A Month of Sundays, Roger’s Version, and S, which explore the complex relationship between matter and spirit of the secular society. Influenced by the “dialectical theology” of 20th century theologian Karl Barth, Updike gains a perspective on the world, which helps him to give a comprehensive and complex representation of the people and scenes around him. Updike, who has repeatedly described himself as a Christian, often talks about the religious aspects of his work. But on the other hand, he doesn’t think that his work belongs to Christian art. When he is asked the relationship between his creation and Christian art in an interview, he once said, “I’ve never really offered it as Christian art, my art is Christian only in that my faith urges me to tell the truth, however painful and inconvenient, and holds out the hope that the truth—reality—is good. Good or no, only the truth is useful” (qtd. in Plath, 104). This conversation represents Updike’s view of creation. Although he tries many writing techniques among his literary career, generally speaking, Updike is still a realistic writer. And his view of reality is deeply related to religious belief, so it can be said that his view of reality is based on his religious belief. Thus, the study of religious beliefs in Updike’s work is an essential part. On the other hand, Updike pays attention to native culture, and he is named as the vermeer of American authors. The subject of Updike’s works concerns about “the whole middle, hidden, troubled America”. As James A. Schiff said, Religious beliefs are the subject of many of Updike’s works, such as A Month of Sundays (1975), Roger’s Version (1986), and S (1988), which explore the complex relationship between matter and spirit of the secular society. As Updike expressed during an interview in 1976: “I’ve never really offered it as Christian art, my art is Christian only in that my faith urges me to tell the truth, however painful and inconvenient, and holds out the hope that the truth—reality—is good. Good or no, only the truth is useful” (qtd. in Plath, 104). Therefore, the discussion of religious beliefs is indispensable when studying Updike’s work. Unlike Melville and Hemingway, who traveled the globe for adventures that would later surface in their writing, Updike, the vermeer of American authors, found the stimuli needed to produce great art to home—in simple domestic and communal scenes. As James A. Schiff said, What Updike does best, though, is America. Stretching himself across the continental surface, absorbing as much as he can of America’s people, attitudes, land, and history, Updike is our contemporary Whitman. ...As Updike writes, his subject has been the whole mass of middling, hidden, troubled America (Schiff, 10).Updike’s novel In the Beauty of the Lilies is a further attempt to portray America. He delves into the historical past and brings the hero’s story to the present, thus capturing the evolution of American culture throughout the twentieth century. All his books, he imagined, would contribute to this “continental magnum opus,” but it’s like that In the Beauty of the Lilies was conceived of as playing an important part in the contribution. In the Beauty of the Lilies is one of the important novels for Updike. As a great writer, Updike has set his sights on the various periods and corners of American society for decades in his novels, revealing the transformation of people’s spiritual life with his keen insight. Although the popular Rabbit Tetralogy has described the social aspects of the United States for nearly 50 years, he feels that it is still unfinished, so he launched In the Beauty of the Lilies five years after Rabbit at Rest. Based on the four generations of the Wilmot family, the novel follows the changes in American religion and the development of the film industry over the past century. As Schiff indicates that,In addition, Updike has been interested in how people pass through, and how American culture alters with, time—witness his return every few years to Rabbit Angstrom and the Maples. By journeying to the historical past, Updike demonstrates the evolution that has taken place in American cultural history. (Schiff, 128)The novel’s title is taken from Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, which appears in the opening page of the novel: “In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me: As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on”(Updike, 1996:cover). These stirring verses depict the development of the United States, and they are also what Updike wants to express about the America. As he writes:In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea—this odd and uplifting line from among the many odd lines of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” seemed to me, as I set out, to summarize what I had to say about America, to offer itself as the title of a continental magnum opus of which all my books, no matter how many, would be mere installments, mere stars at hymning of this great roughly rectangular country severed from Christ by the breath of the sea (qtd. in Plath, 1998:142).The images of “the sea” and “Christ” are very vivid expressions of the religious ideas that Updike himself has elaborated in his works. Firstly, it shows that religion is indispensable for Americans; and in the name of faith, the individual demonstrates the motivation for self-action and self-seeking away from religion. Secondly, the connection among American society, history, culture and religion is inseparable. The religion has provided a moral foundation for this country and society. Otherwise, in the course of time and social progress, the decline of this relationship and the erosion of the moral foundation become more and more obvious. Putting these two points together, Updike’s self-confessed “praise” to America is a mixture of love and hate, praise and flogging, conviction and confusion. Thus, In the Beauty of the Lilies has once again become a place for Updike to express that complex emotion, and religion has naturally become the introduction and theme of this novel.The plot of the novel revolves around two clues: one is the evolution of religion from the rise to the decline in one hundred years, and the other is the formation of the film industry representing the popular culture from initial formation to rapid development, and the two influence each other. At the same time, their changes have subverted the traditional American ideas. In the novel, religion is entangled with the film continually, and it has an inestimable influence on American spiritual pursuit and material enjoyment. The four chapters of the novel are based on the four generations of the Wilmots, with one chapter describing a generation. The first generation Clarence, a priest, lives in 1910s. Influenced by the atheism and rational thoughts, Clarence’s firm faith is shaken. He resigns from the priesthood and becomes a salesman. Having lost faith, he goes into the cinema to seek temporary comfort. The family that leaves God suffers from hunger and disease. The second generation Teddy has lost faith in religion, and he can’t find spiritual support from Hollywood movies. So he chooses to seek comfort in real life, to marry and live in peace. Teddy’s daughter, Essie, grows up in a period of star adoration, and the star’s halo makes her very envy. She steps into the film industry and become a movie star finally. She will do anything to succeed in her career. Essie’s son, Clark, is a typical Hollywood teenager: a drug addict, a fast driver, and an unrestrained sex life. When he runs into trouble and fails, he decides to escape from Hollywood, to seek solace in religion, to seek self-respect, and to find a place where he could make a difference, but falls into a cult. 1.2 Literature ReviewJohn Updike has won many foreign literary awards throughout his life, and the work In the Beauty of the Lilies wins the Harvard Art First Prize and Ambassador Book Award. At the same time, it also attracts the attention of Updike researchers. Until now, the novel In the Beauty of the Lilies has received extensive attention from critics and scholars both at home and abroad. In the book John Updike Revisited, James A. Schiff concludes that,Lilies does not utilize a central protagonist or couple. Instead Updike presents four generations of a family, of which not a single generation or individual emerges as central. But Updike devotes equal time and attention to each of the four generations and maintains an overall interest in the family itself, as if the family is the main character. For these reasons---its restrained and traditional form, its overly cautious characters and mood, its moderated sadness, and its lack of a central character---Lilies is a problematic work that does not easily fit the description of a great American novel. (Schiff, 143)George Steiner, a famous scholar, thinks that this work makes Updike firmly occupy the same position in American literary history as Hwthorne and Nabokov; New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani also gives the work In the Beauty of the Lilies a high praise and calls it “not only Mr. Updike’s most ambitious novel to date, but arguably his finest” (Michiko, 67). Meanwhile, James Schiff further believes that this novel is the best representative of American literary creation in recent years. Such evaluation may be a little exaggerated, but the charm of the work and its shocking power to readers are undeniable.In the related monographs of Updike abroad, there is no special research on the work In the Beauty of the Lilies. But it is mentioned in some research monographs about Updike. For example, in James Schiff’s book John Updike Revisited, he thinks that In the Beauty of the Lilies shows the spiritual void caused by the absence of God, which induces the modern people’s mental disorder. Clark in the novel attempts to get rid of the reality by following the cult, but finally falls into the abyss. James Yerks also mentions In the Beauty of the Lilies in his book John Updike and Religion, he believes that Clarence’s resignation is due to the loss of spiritual foundation. Steinberg Sybil’s monograph John Updike: A Sense of Religious Mission analyzes the religious consciousness in the novel In the Beauty of the Lilies. He points out that Updike is influenced by the theological thought of Karl Barth, and analyzes the concrete embodiment of this influence in Updike’s works. In addition, some scholars concerns about the narrative characteristics of the novel In the Beauty of the Lilies. In Updike: America’s Man of Letter, from the God’s-eye perspective, William Prichard indicates that “Updike gives us in this novel a pretty skeptical take, as far as his characters go, on the success of such a historical activity” (Prichard, 253).In terms of research papers, most of the researches on In the Beauty of the Lilies are mainly book reviews, and few journal papers are involved. For example, In World Literature Today, Marvin La Hood notes that the novel ends with a “bizarre, hollywood-style” ending, suggesting that America has lost its most basic sense of human decency and self-respect. According to Walter Goodman, In the Beauty of the Lilies is mainly about movies. Like God, Hollywood is the eternal theme of the family legend from 1910 to 1990. The critic A. O. Scott comments that In the Beauty of the Lilies is the combination of historical facts, “In the Beauty of the Lilies provides a new and valuable dimension to the historical romance of the American middle class” (Scott, 28).In China, In the Beauty of the Lilies was translated by Yuan Fengzhu and first published in 1999. At present, compared with other works of Updike, there is not much domestic research on this novel. According to CNKI’s statistics, there are nineteen articles published on the theme of In the Beauty of the Lilies, including four dissertations. Through analysis and induction, the current research on In the Beauty of the Lilies in China is mainly in the following aspects:First of all, it mainly discusses the development and evolution of American religion in the 20th century from the perspective of social and historical criticism. Yuan Fengzhu’s article “Religion+Hollywood=?—Interpretation of In the Beauty of the Lilies” is the earliest paper to analyze this work. She thinks that Updike successfully analyzes the American social reality in the 20th century through In the Beauty of the Lilies (Yuan Fengzhu, 92). In “The Rise of Popular Culture: an Interpretation of In the Beauty of the Lilies”, Li Yun discusses the influence of popular culture represented by film on American spirit and life in the 20th century, and holds a critical attitude towards the rise of film (Li Yun, 158). And then, in another article, by investigating the lives and religious beliefs of the Wilmots, Li Yun annalyzes the religious changes in America since the 20th century (Li Yun, 59). Gu Xueru in “The History of the Downfall of American Christianity” reveals the spiritual dilemma of each generation in the novel, and believes that the novel shows the decline of American Christianity from the skepticism of the first generation to the destruction of the fourth generation (Gu Xueru, 95). What’s more, Xue Wei in “An Analysis of the Religionary The。