Analysis of Fu Caiyun's “Dissolute Beauty” and Zeng Pu's “Struggle Between Two Minds” ：A Study Based on Bakhtin's Polyphony in Perspective

Abstract

Fu Caiyun, the “Reckless Beauty”, is the most complex artistic character created by Zeng Pu in Sinful Sea Flowers, which has received mixed reviews from academics. The reason for the controversy is the obvious polyphony of Sinful Sea Flowers. Zeng Pu does not narrate Fu Caiyun's story with the absolute authority of the author, Fu Caiyun has a subjective position in the novel, and she expresses her own voice and forms a double-subject dialogue with the author Zeng Pu's voice. Thus Fu Caiyun becomes a “Reckless beauty” with polyphonic characteristics in Sinful Sea Flowers. The polyphony of “Reckless Beauty” is the result of Zeng Pu's “two minds struggle” with the historical and cultural context in which he lives. The blending of “new” and “old” identities, the cultural dialogue between “Chinese” and “Western” influences are internal conflicts that impacted Zeng Pu's rewriting of Fu Caiyun, rendering her character with a polyphonic nature of multiple voices. The text is filled with dialogues between Zeng Pu's “self”' and the “other” Fu Caiyun. Essentially, this represents a double-voiced polyphony of Zeng Pu's conscious and unconscious minds, embodying the “struggle between two minds” within his internal subjective world.