A Revision Of History

E. L. Doctorow (1931- ) is a remarkable phenomenon among contemporary American novelists. Among his published works, Ragtime is his biggest success, which won the first National Book Critics Circle Award and an Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy in 1976.As a novel concerned with the historical period of America at the turn of 20th century, Ragtime catches the sight of many critics for the historical and political elements involved in it. Doctorow is highly regarded and known for his serious philosophical probings and the subtlety and variety of his prose style in fictional works, yet no systematic and detailed analysis is made about the innovative writing techniques he employed in Ragtime and his deft use of these techniques to convey his belief and ideas. Also, though he is a writer belonging to the top echelon of American novelists, E. L. Doctorow does not cause much attention on him in China. There are not many people who do researches on or even are familiar with him in our country.Therefore, this thesis intends to make a tentative analysis of the innovative writing techniques employed by E. L. Doctorow in Ragtime so as to see how Doctorow, by combining the form and content of a novel, expresses his motif of history and offers a truer panoramic view of certain historical period through the adroit use of these techniques. The main body of this thesis consists of three chapters. Chapter one discusses the narrative distance and the ambiguity of the narrative voice. The narrative distance provides an authentic atmosphere for the novel. The position of the narrator in Ragtime calls for various interpretations. The possible interpretations of the narrative voice as that of an omniscient third-person, of the little boy, of the Little Girl, or of the combination of the boy and the little girl and the exclusion of one another indicates a distinctive creation on the part of Doctorow. The ever-changing narrative surface is part of the "meaning" of a book concerned with...