Don Delillo's Deconstruction And Reconstruction Of History In Libra

Don DeLillo is a prominent postmodern writer in American contemporary literary world. His novel Libra, published in 1988, is considered as a representative work of American postmodern literature. It won him Irish Times International Fiction Prize and a National Book Award nomination. Libra is not only regarded as DeLillo's great art of storytelling but also labeled as a historical novel with the author's eye-catching concern of history.Based on the theory of New Historicism, this thesis uses the Louis A. Montrose's theory of"the historicity of text and the textuality of history"to implore the history in Libra, discovering the literariness of history record and the inevitable mark of social context in literary works in this novel. This thesis also investigates the novelist's employment of postmodern writing strategies including changing point of view, discontinuity and metafiction to reveal DeLillo's purpose of deconstructing and reconstructing history. It argues that using his postmodern writing strategies, DeLillo on the one hand deconstructs the authenticity and creditability of traditional history because he states the subjectivity of texts and the impossibility of truthful and coherent history, on the other hand reconstructs his own credible version of Kennedy assassination because of his intention to rewrite the historical event and his reference to historical facts.The thesis consists of an introduction, three chapters and a conclusion. The introduction is a general survey of the author Don DeLillo, his novel Libra, the literature review on the previous research of this novel and the research method of this thesis. Chapter one discusses the author's questioning of the authenticity of traditional coherent history and stating of the subjectivity of text. Chapter two delves into DeLillo's personal intention of rewriting history and the historical mark in Libra. Chapter three focuses on the author's employment of postmodern techniques for deconstructing and reconstructing history in Libra. The conclusion restates the topic and summarizes the main points of the thesis.