A Study Of American Neorealist Fiction

American neorealist fiction has become an important type of contemporary American fiction since it appeared in the1970s. When postmodern experimentalist fiction lost its charm and attraction at the end of the1960s, there were two roads lying ahead of American writers-furthering the postmodern experimentation or returning to the traditional mode of fiction writing. Many American writers, at the crossroads of novel writing, began to pay close attention to societal reality and return to the mode of realistic fiction writing. However, they didn't copy the writing techniques of traditional realist writers; instead, they combined the realist style and postmodern writing skills. Many young novelists participated in this type of fiction writing fashion. As a result, there appeared a new form of fiction-neorealist fiction, which displays the features of both realistic and postmodern fictions. Some critics call this new type of fiction postmodern realistic fiction. In the past forty years, neorealist fiction has developed into the main type of contemporary American fiction.The current study of American neorealist fiction at home and abroad is mainly limited to the discussion of the name of this new type of fiction and focuses on neorealist features in some contemporary American fiction. Focusing on the subject matter, themes, characterization, narrating technique, space of criticism and canonization, this dissertation aims to make a systematic study of American neorealist fiction and points out American neorealist fiction has become a third approach of fiction writing between the traditional and experimental fictions.This dissertation is composed of seven sections. The introductory chapter reviews and summarizes the current academic study of American neorealist fiction. On the basis of it, the dissertation puts forward a definition of American neorealist fiction, demonstrates the significance of its study, and introduces the research purposes, viewpoints, approaches and innovative insights. Chapter One expounds three important aspects of the subject matter in American neorealist fiction. The postmodern society characterized with science, technology and consumerism becomes an important aspect of the subject matter. Since the1970s, the transition of American society and the public life style has exerted direct influences on contemporary American fiction writing. A group of novelists have devoted to depicting the effects of the rapid development of science and technology and the spread of consumerism on the public life. The reality of contemporary American society is vividly presented in this way. History and fictional anecdotes constitute another aspect of the subject matter. Based on the real historical figures and events, American neorealist novelists re-create or fabricate historical figures, and re-construct American historical moments so as to reflect American societal reality and participate in the ideology construction. The third aspect of the subject matter centers on the spiritual and moral world of contemporary Americans. American society has been comparatively stable; however, the crises of faith, politics, environment, ecology, marriage and family, the threat of terrorism, and various kinds of terrors erode the spiritual world of the public, which inevitably causes the moral deterioration. Neorealist writers expose in their writings the effects of those crises on people's mind for the purpose of calling for the consciousness of reconstructing American people's spiritual ecology.Chapter Two discusses the themes of American neorealist fiction. Contemporary Americans' worries about existence, the truth of historical fabrication, and the dissolving of American-style family constitute three significant themes of American neorealist fiction. Different from postmodern experimentalists' evading reality and history but emphasizing selfhood, American neorealist novelists prefer to make the themes of fiction closely connected with contemporary American reality and history. They ponder over the postmodern problems obsessing contemporary American public through two dimensions of reality and history. In this way, they depict American people's worries about existence, the truth of history and human relationships in the postmodern times.Chapter Three defines the concept of character and the characterization in American neorealist fiction. American neorealist fiction focuses on representing HUMAN BEINGs displaying internal and external characteristics. Postmodern experimental novelists tend to pay less attention to the significance of characterization. Conversely, neorealist novelists emphasize creating characters with distinctive external features and a complicated psychological world so as to surpass the "people"(possessing vivid external features yet lacking the stereoscopic effect) in traditional realistic fiction, the "personalities"(displaying layers of personalities) in modern fiction, and the "figures"(existing in the form of signs and shadows) in postmodern experimental fiction. The neorealist fiction characters range from the desperate people in the lower class, social mainstay characters in the middle-class stranded in faith and family crises, minorities deserted in the cultural crack, historical figures displaying another aspect of life, and contemporary social elitists as well. These characters reflect the art of characterization in American neorealist fiction.Chapter Four mainly studies the art of narration in American neorealist fiction. American neorealist fiction inherits the tradition of regional writing in traditional realistic fiction, focuses on minority communities, cosmopolis, American west and borders, and develops a narrative feature of "postmodern American regional writing" with multiculturalism as its background. In the aspect of narrative structure, American neorealist fiction proficiently connects the complete plot in traditional realistic fiction with the technique of collage and pastiche in postmodern experimentalist fiction, highlights the quality of storytelling in fiction, merges the features of traditional and experimental fictions, and thus forms its own unique narrative art. From the dimension of language, American neorealist fiction conveys us the impression that language in American neorealist fiction is not "a transparent window" from the perspective of traditional realistic novelists, and not a subject of word games in the eyes of postmodern experimentalists, but a subject of rhetoric which successfully displays the themes, narrative authenticity and characterization in a fiction.Chapter Five discusses the space of criticism and canonization of American neorealist fiction. American neorealist fiction rose when European continental literary theories poured into America in the1970s. Consequently, apart from social and historical factors, the flourishing of neorealist fiction in America was influenced by the atmosphere of literary criticism. The evolvement of contemporary American literary criticism expands the space of neorealist fiction study, especially deepens the extrinsic space for studying neorealist fiction, and offers important theoretical discourses to understand neorealist fiction. However, during the process of adopting and surpassing some elements from traditional realistic fiction, modern fiction and postmodern experimentalist fiction, American neorealist fiction stimulates the contemporary American literary criticism, and draws its attention to aesthetic perspectives in fiction study. Meanwhile, the canonization of American neorealist fiction is related to contemporary American literary criticism as well as the quality of American neorealist fiction.Finally, the Conclusion part points out that contemporary American history and culture, together with the law of the art of fiction, makes neorealist fiction a prevailing contemporary fiction type. Since the1970s, postmodern consumerism, postmodern civilization of science and technology, contemporary American politics and postmodern multiculturalism breed the flourishing of American neorealist fiction socially, politically, economically and culturally. The development of fiction is inseparable from the tradition of realism. From realism to modernism, postmodern experimentalism, and then to neorealism, it's proved that the art of fiction should be connected with reality, and narrative technique can add artistic effects of storytelling and reflecting reality. In brief, between the choices of postmodern experimentation and traditional fiction writing styles, American neorealist fiction has been a third way of contemporary American fiction writing, and exhibits a profound transition of contemporary American fiction:focusing on reality, reflecting on morality and meditating on existence.