Taoism and eastern aesthetics in the bicultural novel The Good Earth written by P.S. Buck
1. “Taoism and eastern aesthetics in
the bicultural novel The Good Earth
written by P.S. Buck”
Fourth International Conference on
Asian Studies 2016
11-12 June 2016, Toronto, Canada
Presented by: Dacil Sanchez Gonzalez,
PhD
2. Objective
• Identify the features of Taoist philosophy in P.S.
Buck’s novel The Good Earth
Image from: www.pearlsbuck.org
3. Method
• Present principles of Taoism in the arts
• Analyze the novel The Good Earth and identify
these principles
• Support observations with the author’s own
arguments in her speech “The Chinese Novel”
4. Taoism in the arts
Daodejing’s five
main subjects
(Ivanhoe & Van Norden, 2001:158)
Social problems
and their solution
Nonaction
Teaching without words
Tao
Mysticism
Image from: Chang, Chung-yuan. 2011. Creativity and Taoism: A Study of Chinese
Philosophy, Art and Poetry. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers Ltd.
5. Results I: Social problems and their
solutions
Moving together in a perfect rhythm, without a word, hour after
hour, he fell into a union with her which took the pain from his
labor. He had no articulate thought of anything; there was only
this perfect sympathy of movement, of turning this earth of theirs
over and over to the sun, this earth which formed their home and
fed their bodies and made their gods. The earth lay rich and dark,
and fell apart lightly under the points of their hoes. Sometimes they
turned up a bit of brick, a splinter of wood. It was nothing. Some
time, in some age, bodies of men and women had been buried
there, houses had stood there, had fallen, and gone back into the
earth. So would also their house, some time, return into the earth,
their bodies also. Each had his turn at the earth. They worked on,
moving together—together—producing the fruit of this earth—
speechless in their movement together. (p. 29-30).
6. Results II: Nonaction
If a novelist became known for a particular
style or technique, to that extent he ceased to be
a good novelist and became a literary
technician. (…) The Chinese novelists varied
their writing to accompany like music their
chosen themes. (Buck, 2013)
7. Results III: Teaching without words
But the old man had received nothing at all. All day long
he had sat by the roadside obediently enough, but he did
not beg. He slept and woke and stared at what passed
him, and when he grew weary he slept again. And
being of the older generation, he could not be reproved.
When he saw that his hands were empty he said merely,
“I have ploughed and I have sown seed and I have reaped
harvest and thus have I filled my rice bowl. And I have
beyond this begotten a son and son’s sons.”
And with this he trusted like a child that now he would be
fed, seeing that he had a son and grandsons. (p. 104)
8. Results IV: Tao and Mysticism
• Didacticism: moral and ethical stances on
situations illustrated in the novel which were
frequent in China at the beginning of the 20th
century.
9. Conclusion
• Five main principles of Taoism are present in the
novel:
• Choice of subject: Ode to the earth
• Entire creation process was influenced by the
principle of nonaction
• Subtle way of introducing intercultural
differences (teaching without words)
• Didacticism (moral and ethical teachings)
• Mysticism in some passages