At 7 p.m. on December 12th 2018, the school of Foreign Language held a lecture entitled "Psychological Dilemma and Self-Salvation inThe Winter of Our Discontent". The speaker is Professor Wang Gaidi, adoctoral supervisorof the Department of College English of East China Normal University. She is a Fulbright scholar and her research field is English and American literature and literary translation. The lecture was chaired by Professor Zhang Jinghui.Other relevant professional teachers, undergraduates, masters and doctoral students of Foreign Language College attended this lecture.
Professor Wang Gaidi, in combination with her understanding of the novel when translating it, sharedthe concrete emergence and development of the protagonist's psychological predicament and the process of self-redemption in detail. The psychological dilemma of the protagonist is in fact a gamebetweeninterest and conscience (middle aged crisis), from the temptation of prelude to the betrayal of mediation. When Professor Wang Gaidi talked about self-redemption, she especially mentioned that the protagonist actually possessed the salvation power of spiritual mentor, conscience, literature and culture. In this work, Steinbeck quotes elements from Shakespeare's plays, including titles, character settings,languagesand so on, constantly telling readers whataretruth, kindness and beauty.
At the end of the lecture, Professor Wang Gaidi gave a detailed answer to the questions raised by classmates, and talked about many literary implications in this work. Whether the protagonists in the end could get a new life through the sense of ritual left an unknown to the readers.
The lecture was brilliant, leading teachers and students into the literary artistic conception of Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck, and everyone expressed that they had benefited a lot.( author: Li Han)