Reconstruction Of American Civil War History

Edgar Lawrence Doctorow is one of the most acclaimed and prolific American contemporary writers, and in recent years he is increasingly attracting wide critical attention in the academic circle. With the publication of The March (2005), Doctorow has confirmed his centre position in the history of American literature. This novel won him the 2005 Book Critics Circle Award for fiction and the 2006 PEN/Faulkner Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the 2005 National Book Award. Based on the historical event of American Civil War, Doctorow brings us back to the period of more than one hundred years ago, and presents us vividly the chaos that General William Tecumseh Sherman and his troops invoked in their campaign"March to the Sea". In the novel, Doctorow reconstructs the Civil War history through the eyes of dozens of characters, even Sherman himself. During The March, the Union troops destroy and take everything they want, and attempt to demoralize the Southern people into unconditional surrender. Doctorow perfectly melts the line between history and fiction in his way, and opens up an interaction between them.Apart from introduction and conclusion, the thesis is divided into three body chapters. Chapter 1 and 2 respectively applies the two main notions of New Historicism, i. e."historicity of text"and"textuality of history", to analyze how the novel deconstructs the history as single and authentic. Chapter 1 aims to show the relationship between the official historical materials and the Civil War history under Doctorow's pen. By the way of replicating the real historical figure and the real events, Doctorow makes them more reliable. Chapter 2 pays attention to the"textuality of history". Through mixing the historical facts with fictitious ones in his way, through deconstructing hero's grand image, through transferring voice to the common and margined people, Doctorow discloses the truth of the past successfully. Chapter 3 focuses on how E. L. Doctorow combines history and fiction perfectly, and finally gives us a vivid panoramic of American Civil War. What's more, he makes the reader meditate on this inhuman war.Guided by the theory of New Historicism and through a detailed textual analysis of The March, this thesis manages to conclude that The March is a production based on the"historicity of text"and"textuality of history", and through The March Doctorow successfully deconstructs the grand history of American Civil War, mixes the boundary of history and fiction, and delivers us a powerful epic of the reconstruction of the American Civil War according to his own understanding. What's more, Doctorow shows his persistent concern with universal humanity via subverting the hegemony of historical authority. He restores something that was forgotten and neglected by people. Besides, he gives us new possibilities of thought and action in his way.