The Entering Of Ideology Into The Literary Text

By taking George Eliot's Adam Bede as a Specimen of realist novels, this thesis tries to analyze the process of the entering of ideology into the material existence of the literary text. Ideology is the pivot of Marxist theory in literary study. The study of ideology in any literary text should begin from and end in its material existence of a text. Once literary works are put into a social context, they become a kind of discourse. A text cannot be separated from its social formation. Any literary work involves, consciously or unconsciously, the fighting of ideologies. Ideology of a literary work must be understood in its social formation within a whole field of discursive practices. It must be integrated with the actual discursive actions. Therefore, the relationship between ideology and the text should be looked for in these changing complexes. The ideology of a literary text could not be fully understood in an imposed action vacuum of the text itself. Ideology of a text only functions in the fluid of discursive practices.Ideology has several ways to get access to the text: through the process of signification of language as well as the selection of raw material and literary text-composing techniques. Literary works are undoubtedly texts of fictional, well-arranged and self-manifesting language. And ideology is the controlling and constitutive force in the phase of signification. Therefore, history enters into the text as ideology. What the text takes is not the real objects but certain significations. Writing is always a highly intentionally communicative behavior. It fulfils its subversive power by the seduction or oppression of the social formation at the time of its consumption.Man lives in all kinds of relationships and his very identity is got in the net of social relationships. What is embedded in the literary text is not the writer's individual feelings or judgments but the possibilities of the pool of collective consciousness of the social group to which he belongs. The connotation of 'possible consciousness' issimilar to that of 'worldview'.Ideology could be roughly divided into three aspects: the political, the intellectual and the ethical. Moral values can be grouped into the third category: the ethical. In order to construct an ideal theoretical framework, I need a highly 'purified' text. And my choice is Adam Bede, which is a specimen of 'purified' realistic novel. This thesis concentrates on the ethical dimension of Adam Bede. George Eliot chooses the small rural society, depicted in Adam Bede, not for its "cloistered idiosyncratic charm" but as a "simplifying model of the social formation" for its "transparency" [Terry Eagleton, 2002:418-419]. Adam Bede is a typical realistic novel written in the specific historical period of the middle Victorian Age. Its concrete social formation will be analyzed in this thesis as a sketch of the discursive practices at the time of its production.As a distinguishing feature of realistic novels, 'structure of feeling' connects delicately the amply described daily life experience with ideology. It is meant to research the empirical, individual and sentimental items in the field of life. 'Structure of feeling' is a combination of sympathetic observation and of a largely successful attempt at imaginative identification as well as the observation and identification in the society on individual's part. This is parallel to Althusser's structural notion of ideology. Imaginative identification is the result of the controlling and molding power of ideology. The omnipresent invisible force of ideology pervades our whole way of life. These social experiences are the result of cumulative precipitation, which are more obvious and available. The entering of social ideology into a literary text is accomplished through the 'structure of feeling', which is able to grasp the texture of society through the author's own lived experience in his immediate living communities.