1.4 Article Structure

The article is pided into three parts including background, body and conclusion. In the background, the main contents of two books Matin Eden and The Art of Love are clearly and logically introduced. And this paper’s body has been pided into two parts, too. Within the first part, focus is put on detailed analyses of Martin and Ruth’s characters combined with concrete plots in the novel. It is necessary to know what kind of people they are if we want to analyze their loving relationship, because love is an activity which consists of two inpidual persons. In the second part, according to a clue of Erich’s theory structure, much deeper explaination is given towards their love. The conclusion summarizes all research, at the same time, builds a bridge to love attitudes of today’s society.  

2 Literature Review

2.1 Research on Martin Eden

Jack London and his writings (1909) have been given long time attention in Chinese literary circles. At the same time, high interests have also been putting on his legendary life, during which he suisides in the end when he keeps a great reputation and lots of wealth. Martin Eden, as London’s autobiography, provides us with an intensive matirial to know about the author. The literary critics at home have made many researches about Martin Eden from different perspectives. In the early time, critics put attention on the character’s tragic destiny in associated with the background of capital society in this novel. Douqin Zhong once made an analysis of female characters in the book (2006). Xiaoli Zhou explored inpidualism (2010) . In recent years, there also have been scholars talking about Martin’s pcychological activities with psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud such as Xu Wang. His paper ,源Z自+751=文)论(文]网[www.751com.cn (2015) has raised some attention, too.

However, by now, according to my knowledge, there are rarely critics researching about love between Martin and Ruth in the novel. The story is exactly constructed based on the love clue, which pushes Martin to his destiny. From this point, a paper about this sort of love combined with the Art of Love by Erich Fromm is established.