Historicity Of Text And Textuality Of History

The premiere of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger in London on May 8, 1956 shocked both the audience and critics. From then on, the play has been studied by a large number of literary scholars, many of whom admit its great importance and consider it to be a milestone of the development of British drama in the 20th century. The objective of this thesis is to disclose the relationship between Look Back in Anger and its historical context by applying the major theories of New Historicism, especially the New Historicist dictum of "historicity of text and textuality of history". In this thesis, I mainly concentrate on three aspects: analyze Osborne's creational process of Look Back in Anger from the perspective of New Historicism, and point out the play is actually a product of negotiation between Osborne and the historical context; by doing text analysis, discuss the influence of the historical context on Look Back in Anger which makes the play a representation of the postwar Britain; and explore the specific effect of Look Back in Anger on the construction of the historical context of the postwar Britain.