Self - Shaped Problems In The New Historical Novels In The New Period Of China

Since Stephen Greenblatt's Renaissance Self-fashioning: From More to Shakespeare was publicated in 1980, New Historism emerged as a theory and critical practice in America. It developed and growed quickly in the year following 1980. As one of the most important new historicist, Greenblatt announces his own critical characteristic in the study. His project is a broad analysis of instances and modes of self-fashioning. The implication of self-fashioning is not just individuals fashioning themselves but of how Renaissance culture fashioned itself. To some extent it can be said that the new historical novels in the new period of China has accepted the impact of Western New Historicism. This thesis is to explore the issue of self-fashioning in Chinese new historical novels in the light of Greenblatt's theory of New Historism.This thesis is divided into three parts:The first part focuses on the theoretical overview of Greenblatt's self-fashioning. His research plays a crucial role in the Western literary criticism of New Historicism.The second part is a detailed analysis of Greenblatt's study about the triple force in the process of self-fashioning: the first,the power of one's own, which is the power of one's will; the second, the power of others, mainly including two factors of the authority and the alien; the last, an self-consciousness about the fashioning of human identity as a manipulable process, which is a way of designating the forming of a self.The third part is about the embodiment of self-fashioning in the new historical novels of the new period in China, according to the triple force involved in the second part to analyze how the new historical novels complete the self-fashioning. It makes us aware of the new historical novelists'thinking and attempt about subject in the new period in China.