Discourse Analysis Of Isaac Bashevis Singer's Works From The Perspective Of New Historicism

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904—1991), an American Jewish writer, is distinguished for his winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1978. By means of a dying language—Yiddish, Singer not only represents a vivid Jewish world from the seventeenth century to the first half of the twentieth century, but also records how the Jews meditate on religion, ethics and life in the given historical period.In Singer's works there are rife with the Jews struggling between Orthodox Judaism and secular Modernism. Under the shocks of the Holocaust and the heterogeneous cultures, the ordinary Jews at the margin of the society abandon their Jewish identities one after another to rebel against the social reality. Unfortunately, they encounter deeper senses of loss and step into worsen situations instead of improving the status quo. Trapped in the unprecedented value crisis, the Jewish protagonists have no other choice but return to the Judaic tradition with a view to seeking for mental tranquility from the Jewish spiritual treasury. This pattern from betrayal to redemption constitutes the recurrent theme of Singer's novels which emphasizes his Jewishness as well.However, the traditional study sets its focal points mainly on the contents within Singer's works. Something outside the text or the complexity of the text itself is not paid enough attention. Owing to the peculiar historical background and national experience, Singer's literary texts function as a place for different opinions and powers to combat with each other rather than a self-sufficient system. The social elements confine the generation of literary texts while literary texts participate in the construction of the social culture. They do not oppose to each other any more but constitute and complement each other. Given the fact, the present thesis examines the interactive relationship between history and literature in Singer's works in an attempt to analyze his thematic pattern from betrayal to redemption from a fresh perspective.The present thesis intends to interpret Singer's representative works The...