1。3 Literature Review

1。3。1 Study on The House on Mango Street at Home

As a well-known and influential Chicana writer, Sandra Cisneros and her literary work have attracted

many people in literary field。 As the Chinese version of the novel The House on Mango Street was published in China in 2006, the vigorous momentum of studying it started spreading in China。

One of the most popular domestic research points of this novel is poetic paradox。 The House on Mango Street is made up of 44 independent stories。 And they are not quite stories and not quite poems。 Cisneros makes the novel a combination of poem and fiction。 In the twentieth century dominated by fiction, why did Cisneros integrate poetry into her novel? To have a deep understanding on the function of poetic paradox, Gu Shunruo analyzed the “poetry” and the paradox of “poetry” from three perspectives, including text, event and image in Analyzing the Poetic Paradox in The House on Mango Street。 From her analysis, it is clear that

Cisneros used the poetic paradox to reveal the social problems in the adult world to readers (顾舜若, 2011)。

In addition, some scholars analyzed the novel from different perspectives。 Che Shuangjin and Wang Zhuo studied the novel from the perspective of children at first。 They deemed:

Because of the characteristics of children's thinking and feeling, the text shows the scattered plot and the prose structure in space。 The fragmented form of the text is a breakthrough in the structure of the traditional novels, which is based on causal logic or time order。 (2010: 155)

And from the women perspective, they stated that while remodeling herself in the traditional society, Esperanza did not forget to inspire the thousands of Mexico American women to go out bravely, to let the white mainstream society to listen to their voice and to change the state of the whole ethnic groups。 What’s more, from the aspect of culture, the novel shows us a mixed cultural environment, in which Mexico native culture has become the antagonistic power and the last patron of Mexican Americans’ spiritual home in the confrontation with western modern civilization。

Space is another important characteristic in The House on Mango Street。 Zhou Weigui and Zhao Lihua pointed out that “[W]ith Mango Street as its setting, the work illustrates the representation of space by various dominant groups to reveal the mechanism of space in identity construction” (2016: 37)。 In the novel, Mango Street has become the exclusive representation of the social space of oppressed immigrants because the strong group separates itself from the vulnerable groups through the planning of residence。 House has become the representation of the family space of gender oppression because males established the representation of gender space through measures including spatial isolation, physical limitation and sex control to provide females the role orientation, space orientation and gender orientation。文献综述

The novel was also analyzed from the perspective of ecocriticism。 Ecocriticism is a critical theory of ecological literature。 It is a study of the relationship between literary works and physical environment。 In the novel, we can find many vivid images, such as “little rosettes”, “little candy circles”, “cats asleep like little donuts” and so on。 Through the eyes of Esperanza, readers can see the adult world from a cute but more real way。  Esperanza's  love  for  the  four  skinny  trees  and  the  monkey  garden  clearly  shows  us  her  awe  and

veneration to nature (宋明星, 2012: 16)。 However, not all the descriptions of the environment in the novel   are