Historical Reality And Literary Creativity—The Study Of Norman Mailer's Nonfiction Novels

Norman Mailer is one of the famous contemporary American novelists. His first novel The Naked and the Dead made him be a celebrity while he was young, but his reputation is kept by his nonfiction novels. As a prolific author, Mailer has published more than 40 works during over sixty year career, among them there are 9 nonfiction novels, including The Armies of the Night, Miami and the Siege of Chicago, Of a Fire on the Moon, Marilyn: A Biography, The Fight, The Executioner's Song, Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery, The Gospel According to the Son, and The Castle in the Forest. These nonfiction novels can be divided into two types: social documentary novels reflecting the spirit of contemporary American and biographical novels describing famous persons' lives and thoughts. My dissertation uses the distinctive characteristics between nonfiction novel and literary creativity to analyze the relationships between historical reality and literary creativity by the spirit and social life of contemporary American and famous persons' lives and thoughts reflecting in Norman Mailer's nonfiction novels.My dissertation includes five parts. The introduction part surveys Norman Mailer's life and works, especially his nonfiction novels, and then analyzes the research status of Mailer's nonfiction novels at home and abroad, and finally introduces the rising reasons, development status and fundamental characteristics of nonfiction novels—this new literary style emerging from 1960 s in the United States.Chapter I analyzes the relationship between history and text of events in Mailer's nonfiction novels. First it is the explanation of relationships between history and text under the New Historicism, then analyzes history interpretation from narration and types, and historical reality in Mailer's nonfiction novels from materials, time and space construction, and destruction of reality by text.Chapter II analyzes the characters of the language constructing in Mailer's nonfiction novels. First, it analyzes the constructive characters from narrator and social identity, then the fictional characteristics of historical persons in Mailer's nonfiction novels from their psychological description and unique personality, and the typicality of the fictional characters created by Norman Mailer from their times characteristics and social values.Chapter III analyzes the strategies of historical narration in Mailer's nonfiction novels. First, there are the choices of narrative perspective: the first person of view increases the objectivity and reality of novels; the blend of the first and third person of view can describe the inner world of characters and narrate the events; while free-indirect discourse creates characters through their own words and actions. Then it analyzes the uses of auto-biographical and biographical narrative: auto-biographical narrative is good for a writer to express his or her own experience and opinions to life, while in biographical narrative novelist can use historical material and his or her imagination. And then it analyzes the uses of techniques of novels: the use of simile, symbolism and metaphor expresses the literary creation of text; character creating makes Mailer's characters more expressive; while association broadens the readers' horizon. Finally it analyzes the postmodern narrative strategies: intertextuality expresses the relationships between one text and others; super-text indicates the superficial characteristic of modern texts; while metafiction narrative suggests the author take part in the creation of text.The conclusion part points out that Norman Mailer's nonfiction novels reflect the relationships between historical reality and literary creativity and influence the contemporary American time consciousness.