Nonconformity

Henry Miller is a controversial American writer. His trilogy Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring and Tropic of Capricorn, which was first published in Paris in 1930s, was not permitted to be officially published in the United States until three decades later when an American court ruled in 1964 that his fiction was not pornographic. Henry Miller instantly became a household name and was hailed as the prophet of sexual freedom and liberation by the anti-tradition and anti-culture movements in 1960s.Miller's greatness is not limited to it. As a novelist, he makes no scruple to exhibit his surrealist aesthetic of nonconformity and his unyielding spirit of revealing and liberating his true self, which is probably the main reason why he receives acclaim and respect. Miller's surrealist aesthetic principle of nonconformity violates conventional aesthetic, moral and social expectation. He makes a presentation of society, life, morality and self in a devastatingly honest way, rendering it possible for him to make"one of the most significant contributions to the literature of our time."Miller is probably"the most obscene writer in the history of literature"or, at least, one of the writers of the kind. Just as Robert Reed, an English poet, says, it reveals the devastating honesty that Miller displays in nonconformity with traditional morality and liberation of his true self. The controversy over, and criticism of, Miller revolve, in most cases, around his explicit sexual description in his novels. In essence, the frank description of unscrupulous sex is a method that Miller adopts to exhibit his true self. His real intention to write the trilogy is just to unfold his nonconformity surrealist aesthetic by various means and makes every effort to liberate his true and natural self bridled by the modern mechanical civilization, which is what the present dissertation studies.Miller's nonconformity manifests itself in his deconstructing various established principles or taboos with regard to society, tradition, civilization and morality. It is not only...