Philip Roth's New Realism Sight

Philip Roth is one of the most prominent writers in Jewish American literature as well as in contemporary American literature. Focused on important issues of the postwar decades in the second half of the twentieth century, Roth's recent trilogy American Trilogy explores the social complexities of American Jewish society and modern American experience. Based on concerns with the reality of Jews and America, American Trilogy develops a neo-realistic view by the use of realistic and modernistic writing techniques. This thesis analyzes the neo-realistic tendency in American Trilogy from both cultural and textual perspectives.The preface introduces the researches upon Roth and points out the inadequacy in the research upon Roth in our nation.The main body of the thesis consists of four chapters.Chapter One is a brief introduction to the neo-realistic tendency in American literature, including its development and features.Chapter Two examines Philip Roth's writing stages and explores his return to neo-realism in his later writing, especially in American Trilogy.Chapter Three and Four analyze the neo-realistic tendency in American Trilogy through the author's revisiting of Jewish American conditions and his omnipresent theme of modern American society.Chapter Three focuses on the use of Jewish cultural motifs in the three books of trilogy respectively, i.e. "Generation Gap" in American Pastoral, "Betrayal" inâ… Married Communist and "Alienation" in Human Stain. Through the employment of such cultural motifs, the author traces racial history in the decades before and after the World Warâ…¡, raises historical and social problems in Jewish American society and attempts to find out solutions. Chapter Four breaks the principle of analyzing text and subjects and examines the novels historical features as a whole. This chapter reveals Roth's return to American social and historical reality from three basic elements------historical frame, people in history and social psychology. The first part discusses the trilogy's unique sense of time and space in narrative structure. Combining the chronicle of postwar history and the narrator's thinking fragments, the trilogy fabricates a special narrative style with both realistic and post-modernistic features. Apart from that, Roth establishes Newark Jewish ghetto as his writing background and creates a typical realistic setting. The second part discusses characterization in American Trilogy. Through the American Jewish stereotypes and the social and tragic qualities in characters, American Trilogy features typical characterization that belongs to realistic writing principles. The last part brings to light the complex psychology of "American Dream" and reveals the bewilderment of Jewish American and even modern Americans in the pursuit of the dream.From the above-mentioned analyses, the thesis draws a conclusion that by the return to racial and social reality and the interweaving of realistic and modernistic techniques, American Trilogy presents us with a neo-realistic view, which also establishes Roth as one of the most important realistic writers in contemporary time.