A New Historicist Reading Of A Christmas Carol

This essay is composed of introduction, four chapters and conclusion. In the introduction, the layout of the thesis will be introduced and the comprehensive generalization of this essay in the conclusion.The first chapter deals with Charles Dickens'work, critical response and the New Historicism. The works written by Dickens, the greatest critical realist in England of Victorian era will be introduced. His novels have brought lots of laughs and tears to readers. Because of his reputation, every book he has published has produced mixed feelings, responses and criticism to his way of narrating the stories or to the characters and contents of his works. All these will be discussed in this chapter. The brief introduction of A Christmas Carol will be given in the middle of this part. And in the end, the poetics of New Historicism will be discussed briefly in this chapter.The second chapter discusses the marginalized characters in A Christmas Carol. Marginalized person often lived in the lower rank of the society. Dickens was good at describing the ordinary people and exploring the ugly side of the society through his excellent skill like painting pictures. Some characters in his novels were ordinary people who often lived at the foot of the social ladder. While some characters had some eccentricities, some were crude and merciless, and some were not accepted by the people around them. In this chapter, this theory will be used to mainly interpret three characters in A Christmas Carol. Readers can have a briefly understanding to life of the lower middle class, which was a new part in the Victorian society. The capitalists'behavior and idea can also be understood through the exaggerated description of Scrooge. Through analyzing their personalities, Dickens'meticulously arrangement of the character can be seen.The third chapter focuses on the relation between history and text. New Historicists pointed out two concepts to summon the relation of history and text- textuality of history and historicity of texts. History, as a meaningful account of past, will never be accessible. The fictiveness and literariness of history make the interpretation of historical representations multiple and confusing. In this chapter, the textuality of history will be used to expose Dickens'own childhood in A Christmas Carol with the consult of John Forster's Life of Charles Dickens. Readers can find Dickens'own figure in the characters in many of his books. Textuality of history makes this evident. In the middle of this chapter, the historicity of texts will be discussed through tracing the transition of A Christmas Carol from a classical novel to the films of Hollywood and other film companies. The historicity of texts is about the specificity of texts in different times and spaces. Sometimes the writers are accessible to history closely, sometimes they are not, especially when the film editors interpret the original novel into films. They can only use their imagination plus historical documents to achieve the best effect. But these do not hinder the readers to like this book and its author. The relation between history and text makes the reading of this novel more interesting. The New Historicists hold that the History is not linear and is composed of many histories. They deeply doubted the truth of the History that officially handed down by the governments. So they paid attention to the study of histories, such as anecdotes, trifles in authors'normal lives. New Historicists suggested that these histories were crucial to the study of texts. At the end of this chapter, the theory of History and histories will be used to analyze the hero, Scrooge's past, present and future. In this novel, past, present and future are histories that together form the History.The fourth chapter discusses subversion and containment aspects of A Christmas Carol through New Historical approach. Greenblatt also divided the processes of subversion and containment into three concrete forms. Where there is the power, there are subversion and containment. Subversion comes from the power. It challenges the power. Then the power represses it. That is the containment. Subversion and containment get together to push the history and text develop forward. In A Christmas Carol, the writer put his wish on the hero. He arranged Scrooge to change. This sudden change may seem odd in the real life, but in the literary text, anything is possible. Scrooge was a member of the whole merciless capitalists. Dickens criticized Scrooge's greedy and crudeness. He wanted to change the present social situation. That is the aspect of subversion. While being a critical realist, Dickens had limitation when describing reality. He just wanted to change poor people's life through gentle reform. He did not realize the must of revolution. The political power of Victorian society repressed Dickens'dream. That is the aspect of containment. But Dickens'works have great influence to the later generations. They can search endless spiritual treasure from his novels.In conclusion, the whole paper will be concluded and the whole works of Dickens will be briefly touched on to further point out the intimate relation between history and text. And according to the understanding, some disadvantages of this approach will be pointed out. History can never jump out the circle to develop independently. And so does literary. Culture, politics, economy and many other elements bound together to enhance the life of our human being.