凯特 肖邦短篇小说的几个特点开题报告

1. 研究目的与意义（文献综述包含参考文献）

Kate Chopin is an outstanding woman writer in the late 19th century America. As The Awakening and many short stories such as The Story of An Hour came out, consequently there arises criticism widely from the readers and scholars at that time, because her works deal with the female awakening and rebellion against paternity. It is not until half century later that her works are reassessed by critics. Some of these researches are related to the topic of my thesis.Some short stories written by Kate Chopin such as The Story of An Hour, Madame Celestins Divorce, A lady of Bayou St. John, and Regret are regarded as the feminist works that against the patriarchal oppression by many readers and the scholars. For instance, Liu Zhuo (2004), analyzed the historical background of the protagonists self-consciousness, and explored how American main stream society ignored womens values and imposed constraints on spiritual freedom. He thought that this short story aimed to reveal the cruel reality that ignored the womens social value and reflect the pursuing about self-value of women. And Song Xue (2010), explored the heroines pursuit of freedom and awakening of female consciousness and she noted The Dream of an Hour offers a perfect example for feminist ideology and writing in modern literature. As far as her concerned, Mrs. Mallard is regarded as the embodiment of ideality and beauty. Chopin pinned her own social ideal into Mrs. Mallard. The two scholars Liu Zhuo and Song Xue hold a positive attitude towards Mrs. Mallard and they think the heroine represented the women to express the advance of society and the heroine gave off the voice of feminist consciousness.There is another attitude towards Mrs. Mallard. These readers and scholars bitterly criticize Mrs. Mallard and seek the real point of Chopins short stories. Form another perspective, Zhou Yapin (2012) explores the dramatized irony in The Story of An Hour, not only from the title, the language, the relationship among the main characters, but also from the plot, the authors diary to reveal that though Chopin sympathizes the heroine, she puts bitter irony on her. Sun Shengzhong (2003) probes into irony, symbolism and other literary techniques used by Chopin through close reading her two famous short stories The Story of an Hour and The Storm, and points out that besides the feminism, there are irony and symbolism in Chopins stories.All of the essays that deal with Kate Chopins short stories are almost from the aspect of feminism, and there are still little essay dealing with the irony and contradictory in her short stories, which this essay is going to discuss.

2. 研究的基本内容、问题解决措施及方案

The purpose of this thesis is to deal with irony and contradictory in Kate Chopins short stories, which will be done through a comprehensive exploration of how Kate Chopin portrays different female images in these four short stories that are The Story of An Hour, Madame Celestins Divorce, A lady of Bayou St. John, and Regret. I will research into different writing techniques, detailed psychological description and social background in these works, which will help to reveal the heroins ambivalence and abnormal behavior.Moreover, I will use the method of comparative analysis and association method to probe into the real inner world of these heroines and Kate Chopins real attitude towards these heroines.