摘要

亨利•詹姆斯（1843-1916）在美国文坛占据着重要的地位，而《黛茜•米勒》是他早期的国际题材作品。本文旨在采用文化批评某些思想观点，对小说中所体现的欧美文化冲突作了细致的分析，以强调跨文化交际中，寻求文化融合的重要性。
在前人研究成果的基础上，本文首先简要介绍了亨利•詹姆斯的成长经历以及小说《黛茜•米勒》，探讨了他自身独特的生活经历对他国际题材的选择的影响以及小说的历史和社会背景。接着本文详细分析了小说中的文化冲突和文化融合，并认为正是文化冲突导致了黛茜所遭遇的悲剧。而文化冲突不仅仅在欧美文化中，在中西文化中也存在文化冲突。为了避免发生像黛茜所遭遇的悲剧，中西双方应该求同存异，寻求文化融合的意义。

关键词：国际主题, 文化差异, 文化冲突, 文化融合, 跨文化交际

ABSTRACT

Henry James (1843-1916) occupies an important position in American literary history and Daisy Miller is one of Henry James’s works to investigate the “international theme”. By means of cultural studies, the present thesis will give a full analysis of the cultural conflicts reflected from the communication between the highly-developed European upper culture and the newly-developing American culture with a focus on the significance of cultural fusion in intercultural communication.
After a brief review of the previous studies on Henry James’s Daisy Miller and intercultural communication, this thesis first of all concisely introduces Henry James and the novella, which attempts to explain that James’s fascination on “international theme” is largely decided by his special life experience and that the success of the novella has its historic and social reason. It will then give a textual analysis of the cultural clashes and cultural fusion in the novella, in order to demonstrate that it is the cultural conflicts that give rise to Daisy’s tragedy. Cultural conflicts exist not only between America and Europe, but also between China and western countries. To avoid the tragedy of Daisy’s, Chinese people and the westerners are supposed to seek sameness while reversing differences, which would lead to cultural fusion.

Key words: international theme, cultural differences and conflicts, cultural fusion, Europeanized Americans, intercultural communication

1  Introduction
As a novelist, dramatist, and literary critic, Henry James (1843-1916) occupies an important position in American literary history. However, his fame generally rests upon his novels and stories which are always set against a larger international background, usually between Europe and America, and centered on the comparison of the two different cultures with two different groups of people who represent two different value systems. A number of novels James produced reveal James’s fascination with his “international theme”: “the meeting of America and Europe, American innocence in contact and contrast with European decadence, and its moral and psychological complications” .