On The Utopian Writing In Victoria Hislop’s Novels

Victoria Hislop(1959-)is a renowned British author of popular fiction,known for her warm and touching stories.Whenever a new book is published,magazines and newspapers are always impressed by the new territory she explores.As she travels the Mediterranean coast to find the tender stories buried under the grand narrative.The importance of Utopia in Hislop’s writing was recognized early on,and she preserved it in subsequent compositions.The thesis is devoted to Victoria Hislop’s fictional works and is dedicated to exploring how Hislop achieves Utopian writing with individualistic overtones at the textual level and the unique narrative features that this writing brings.Using the method of close reading of texts,combined with the theory of Utopia,and based on Victoria Hislop’s personal works,interviews and other materials,the thesis explores Victoria Hislop’s spiritual resonance with Utopia,attempting to discuss the type of Utopian world that exists within the works and the process of its evolution,while finding her specific presentation and reflections at the text.This writing is both Hislop’s response to the turbulent and unsettling background of the last decade or so in Greece and a concrete expression of her individualistic character.The paper will discuss the following four aspects.The first part,“Two Types of Utopia in Hislop’s Novels”,takes a close reading of the text to argue for and summarize two types of Utopia in Hislop’s fiction.The first is the “on-the-ground Utopia” with a precise location,where “Spinalonga Island” becomes a paradise for lepers;“Sunrise Hotel” is a place that attempts to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor.“Greece” is a mecca for modern young people to escape from their meaningless lives.The second is the “cultural symbolic Utopia” with concrete or abstract cultural symbols but no actual location.“Turkish embroidery” represents the combination of Jewish culture,Christian culture and Muslim culture.“Flamenco” finds a spiritual home for all wanderers.These are the two paths that Hislop points out to the people in the midst of the unstable external environment and the serious internal ideological conflicts.The second part,“The Evolution of Utopia in Hislop’s Novels”,examines the evolution of Utopia in Hislop’s novels from the perspective of her internal writing about Utopia.At the beginning,the Utopia in her novels appears to be under construction,but this Utopia cannot escape the fate of self-deconstruction.With the return of normal life,the Utopia disappears.Finally,her recent work has been devoid of Utopia and has moved towards the other side of it——Dystopia.The third part,“Narrative Features of Utopia in Hislop’s Novels”,examines the narrative art of Hislop’s novels combined narratology with traditional Utopian literature.Firstly,she inherits the narrative framework of traditional Utopian literature: travel +search/discovery/construction,and creatively adds the element of psychological distance to “travel”.Secondly,she uses flattened characters to reverse the complete loss of voice of characters in traditional Utopian literature.Finally,she selects the Third-person compound point of view,combined with a nested narrative structure that together complete the portrayal of the novel’s Utopia.The fourth part,“Imagination and Reflection in Utopian Perspective”,is devoted to exploring the humanistic concerns and reflections that Hislop conveys in her Utopian writing.By examining the social scenes of discrimination against the Infectious diseases,class disparity and war conflict that Hislop so painstakingly sketches in her work,as well as analyzing and exploring her attitudes towards the various characters in the text,we find the solutions that convey behind her works——healing the wounds with love and hope.At the same time,her works reconstructs traditional Utopian literary narratives,adding dynamic to it.