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Title |
Semantic Structure of Pai Hsien-Yung’s Short-stories |
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Author |
Táňa Dluhošová |
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PhD Candidate, Institute of Far Eastern Studies, Charles University, Prague |
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Abstract |
The article focuses on distribution and usage of allusions in Pai Hsien-yung literary writing. It observes that the allusions’ source texts originate in those cultural backgrounds, where the particular short-stories take place (the American or Chinese cultural background). Such allusions distribution seems to be intentional and allusions help to construct the meaning on different semantic levels: the level of characters (the lowest semantic level), the level of short-story, and cycle. The article also observes that the constructed meaning and short-stories rooted both cultural backgrounds has cyclic character, and thus a short-stories dialog occurs. From this point of view, the meaning of last two short-stories, “Danny Boy” and “Tea for Two”, differ in comparison to previous short-stories. The article, deriving from the Homi Bhabha’s conception of “the third space of enunciation”, believes that Pai Hsien-yung while using the same literary techniques builds a “hybrid background”, where all answers to the questions and dichotomies occurring in previous works can be found. |
