In literary works, the rose has rich connotation, has the praise of nature, has the ugly condemnation, also has the yearning for the beautiful love. My paper focus on the symbolic significance of roses, based on A Rose for Emily and The Red Rose and the White Rose.

William Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers in American Literature generally and southern literature specifically. He has written 19 novels and more than 120 short stories in his entire life, which has made a powerful and artistic contribution to contemporary American fiction. He has a southern complex, and most of his works are based on the southern United States, emphasizing southern themes and southern consciousness. One of its most famous short stories, "A Rose for Emily", is of great significance for understanding and study Faulkner's work style and the American southern culture. Along with the development of the north industrial civilization, the traditional southern society is under a great threat, and the southern tradition and civilization are gradually decayed, based on this situation, "A Rose for Emily" tells the story about Emily, an elderly Southern woman whose funeral is the obligation of their small town. And the title "A Rose For Emily" as an allegorical title; this woman had undergone a great tragedy, for this Faulkner pitied her. And as a salute, he handed her a rose.

Eileen Chang, was one of the most influential modern Chinese writers. Chang is noted for her fiction writings that deal with the tensions between men and women in love, and are considered by some scholars to be among the best Chinese literature of the period. "The Red Rose and the White Rose" is a widely circulated novella of Eileen Chang. The author exquisitely describes the ordinary people's hidden mental feeling and complex mind, showing the thirties of the 20th century when Chinese and western culture meet people's feelings, marriage life, reveals the fusion of traditional and modern women in the patriarchal society under the difficult to get rid of the tragedy of life. "The red rose"and "the white rose" is represented two kinds of women towards man.

Eileen Chang and William Faulkner all use "rose" as an important symbol, my paper compares the similarities and differences symbolism of "rose" in Chinese and foreign literature, by studying the Faulkner's and Eileen's works.

There are a lot of domestic and foreign scholars studied on the symbolic meaning of "rose" which has a variety of different angles of research, through a different perspective or point of view. Fanting Kong holds the view that "Rose" has very deep symbolic meanings in the novel. It connects with the theme and characteristics of the heroine closely. And it disclosed the inevitable causes of Emily's tragedy character distortion. In his view, as a dried rose which represents "secrecy", introducing that the "rose" is a symbol of silence between the narrator and Miss Emily, the narrator keeps Emily's secrets until her death. Xiaoyan Wang 'study towards Eileen Chang shows the "Rose" as a symbol if female rhetoric set the reconstruction of love, delineation of the two types of woman's life trajectory. The domestic and foreign scholars analyze the symbolic meaning of "rose" by studying on the single work, however, my paper emphasizes the symbolic meaning through two different types of literature works.

2. 研究的基本内容与方案

The paper is a study on the rose imagism in the two novels: one by Faulkner and one by Eileen Change. It comprises of four parts. Part one is introduction, introducing the two novels and the symbolic meaning of "rose" in two novels. Part two is literature review and research design. Part three compares the rose imagism in the two novels. Part four concludes the study. In this paper, it apply manners as analysis of cases, comparative study and the method of references. My paper analyzes two novels -- "A Rose for Emily" and "The Red Rose and the White Rose", by comparing the different rose imagism to show the symbolic meaning of "rose" and the symbolism in both Chinese and foreign literature.

[1] CAO, S. Female Characters’ Productivity in William Faulkner’s Novel[J]. Studies in Literature and Language, 2011: 56-61.

[2]Dilworth, T. A Romance to Kill for: Homicidal Complicity in Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"[J]. Studies in Short Fiction, 1999(3): 251.

[3] Faulkner, W. A Rose For Emily[M]. Perfection Learning, 1990.

[4] Kong, F. The Absence of the Rose The Symbolic Meaning of “Rose” in William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily[C]. Proceedings of 2016 International Conference on Contemporary Education, Social Sciences and Humanities, 2016, 389-393.