严监生与葛朗台吝啬形象对比论文-文献综述.doc

2. Literature Review
2.1 On the Traditional Studies of the Books
When the novel The Scholars was finished in 1750s by Wu Ching-tzu in Qing Dynasty it has become the model of satire in ancient China. There are 56 chapters, and describe about 200 figures, which is one of the best satires and influence later ages.
Wu Ching-tzu took great pleasure in the company of genuine scholars and was most eager to meet them; he despised those who wrote nothing but examination essays, however, detesting those who were proficient at nothing else. (A Brief History of Chinese Fiction Lu Hsun 1950s)
The great contribution for Wu Ching-tzu is that The Scholars has become a worldwide satire novels that equal to other masterpieces.( History of Chinese Literature Yuan Xingpei chapter 5)
Eugenie Grinder is a novel by Honoré de Balzac about miserliness, and how it is bequeathed from the father to the daughter, Eugenie, through her unsatisfying love attachment with her cousin. As is usual with Balzac, all the characters in the novel are fully realized. Balzac conceived his grand project, The Human Comedy, while writing Eugenie Grinder and incorporated it into Comedy by revising the names of some of the characters in the second edition.
The popular domestic comments of the novel Eugenie Grinder mainly focus on the analyses of Felix Grinder’s miserliness, which is a kind of selective misreading. In this novel, the protagonist is Eugenie. And the main content is Eugenie s life tragedy, which due to her father Felix passionately pursuit and avaricious possession of money. In the novel, the two values, the warmth, which represented by Eugenie, conflicted with money worship, represented by her father Felix. Crushed by the magic power of money, the living space and psychological space shrink and deteriorate gradually. The life of Eugenie displays how money revises the human s life and turn Eugenie into the girl confined by gold. (The Female Who Is Tied up by Gold———On Eugenie Grinder’s Life Tragedy DAI Chun-lei Literary Academy, Jilin Normal University, Siping, Jilin136000)
2.2 On the Traditional Studies in the Characters of Grinder and Yan Jiansheng.
For instance, Yan Jiansheng, come from The Scholars by Wu Ching-tzu, reader think he is a miser because of three reasons. First, said by Yen Ta—Yu “Though I have a little land, I don't mind telling you, our families of four usually feel it would be extravagant to buy pork. When my son is hungry, we just buy four cash worth of cooked meat for him”. (Chapter 5)He has so much silver, but he never wants to pay for pork. Second, “After the Lantern Festival, he felt stabs of pain in his heart. At first he just put up with them, doing his accounts as usual every night until midnight; but gradually he lost his appetite and wasted away till he was nothing but skin and bones. Yet he grudged the money to buy ginseng” (chapter 5). The last one is “Lying there at the point of death, Yen Ta−yu stretched out two fingers and refused to breathe his last; and when his nephews and servants made various wild guesses whether he meant two people, two events or two places, he simply shook his head. But now his wife had stepped forward to say: “I'm the only one who understands you. You're worried because there are two wicks in the lamp—that's a waste of oil. If I take out one wick, it will be all right.” Suiting her actions to her words, she removed one wick. All eyes were fixed on Mr. Yen, who nodded his head, let fall his hand, and breathed his last. Then all the family, great and small, began to wail and prepare for the funeral, placing the coffin in the central hall of the third courtyard.” (Chapter 6).Thus the “two wicks” became the classic details of describing the miser in Chinese literature treasure house.
Now let me turn focus to Grinder, a man who extremely mean. His mean is expressed in his every word, every action. He distributed personally, not one more. Relatives from afar, he would not let the maid to buy food, but told the tenant to hunt crow for soup; before his death, the priest took out the cross, candlesticks, silver inlay bottle of holy sacraments to pray for him, he suddenly waking up, glued to those sacred. "The priest took the gold cross on his mouth, so he could kiss the statue of Christ, but his action is very terrible, intended to seize the cross, the final effort to make him were killed." The last blessing for Eugenie was "take care of everything good, there came to me to pay off!" so , the only thing he cared in the world was money. Though they have so many commons, but they also have differences. For Yan Jiansheng, is a man who cared about his wife and relatives, and generous to help them. But for Grandet who is a real stingy person that both for his family or himself. Yan Jiansheng can cost money for need. But Grinder does not. To compare them and find out the reasons is an important reason why I chose this study and to write this paper.

let him growing up well, Yan Jiansheng let his mother who use to be a concubine his legal wife. And he marries another as his concubine. He manages his money well with bad condition and worked everyday until night so that he could leave a generous heritage to his only one child.
In a word, Yan Jiansheng loves his families very much. He cherishes and considers them. However, Grinder loses the basic feeling of human beings. He drowns in the world of money absolutely.

3.3.2 Their attitudes towards relatives
3.3.2.1 Grinder’s attitudes towards his relatives —his brother and nephew.
Grinder’s elder brother committed suicide because of bankruptcy. His nephew asks his help. The servant makes a pancake to him. He sadly feels it is big lose to him. When his nephew prepares to go to Indian, Grinder gives him several boxes which made of woods. He is always happy to do things without wasting his money. Actually, he never thought about helping his nephew let alone gave money supporting his business.