Reconstruction Of American History Before The World Warâ… : Neo-realistic Characteristics Of Ragtime

Doctorow is one of the most distinguished writers in modern American literature. In his best-seller Ragtime, Doctorow contrives to construct a period of history and society that is not deprived of peddlers, railways, streetlights, and New York City. Ragtime is frequently regarded as a historical novel due to its relation with historical figures. Many reviewers have remarked upon it from the perspective of new historism and postmodernism. By applying neo-realistic theory and theories of Linda Hutcheon, the thesis attempts to reveal the effort that Doctorow has tried to reconstruct a real panorama of American society and represent the living condition of the individual before the World WarⅠ. At the same time, the thesis would sum up some of the techniques that can be used in neo-realism: decentering, parody, polyphony and traditional realistic techniques.The thesis is composed of three parts. The first part contains a brief introduction to Ragtime, Doctorow and the literary review of Ragtime and an introduction about the theory of neo-realism.The body part focuses on the realistic analysis of the fiction and the author’s intention. The first chapter analyzes the life of different groups of people from the decentering perspective. The second chapter focuses on the parody of the fictional and non-fictional characters and events with the theory of parody by Linda Hutcheon. Doctorow manages to reconstruct those “real” events from his view of the life of historical figures. The third chapter argues that Ragtime bears a realistic mode of representation, but with a little difference. The last part was a conclusion about what has been analyzed in last three chapters.