W. M. Thackeray And Expansion Of The British Empire

Vanity Fair is regarded as the most important work of Thackeray. The past researches on this novel mainly focus on the theme connotations of the work, character image analyses and the narration techniques of the writer. This dissertation relates the work with the Victorian colonization background and states facilitating function of the work in British Empire's overseas process with the method of"contrapuntal reading".The critical method"contrapuntal reading"is put forth by Edward Said which emphasizes the relation between literary work and empire history. Through the close reading on the text and the study of historical environment, it tends to make the mutual corroboration of the two parts in order to unearth the historical truths hidden by the writer in the texts to further illustrate that the novel involves itself in the construction of empire in an exceedingly covert way.This dissertation consists of three parts. The beginning part makes a brief introduction of Thackeray composition and the outline of Vanity Fair as well as the research method of this text. The body part is divided into three chapters. The first chapter reviews the colonial narration tradition of British novels and indicates their influences on the conspiration between Vanity Fair and British Empire. The second point out the conspiration relations between Vanity Fair and colonizing activities of the Empire by expounding their influences on each other. The third chapter goes further to the interior of the text to discuss the different narration of the empire and the colonies in Vanity Fair to restore the historical facts behind the narration and show how the novel promotes and maintains the empire's colonization career and uniaxially study the influences the novel has on the empire expansion from the angle of the work. In the conclusion part, the novel returns to Said, sums up the achievements of each chapter and concludes the argument of this dissertation, that is, through the different writing on the suzerain and the colony, Vanity Fair involves itself in the construction of empire and colonization process in a hidden way.