Daniel Walking Down The Shrine Of History

E. L. Doctorow is regarded as one of the famous postmodernist writers with his great contribution to American literature by introducing a new method in fiction writing—the recreation of historical novels. His third novel The Book of Daniel published in 1971, and won him a nomination for National Book Reward. It is this book that laid solid basis for Doctorow's position in the contemporary American literature.The Book of Daniel reflects American society in 1950s and 1960s. The author selects the striking political event that Rosenbergs were electrocuted for treason against the United States as the core event and triggers a warm discussion among the American readers. Since then, the book is named as the best political novel in the United States and Doctorow enjoys the reputation of the American writer with the widest imagination. Although The Book of Daniel is often analyzed as a political fiction there lacks a systematic study about the narration for the exploration of the figuration of Daniel. What's more, albeit E. L. Doctorow, like Torn Morrison, ranks top of the list for contemporary American novelists, he does not achieve much focus in China. Consequently, not many scholars do research about him, let alone readers to know about him.In this context, this thesis attempts to discuss how Doctorow applies narration technique on contents to help Daniel, the hero, walk down from the shrine of history and come to a debatable person during the era of 1950s and 1960s in America. Apart from introduction and conclusion, the thesis is divided into three chapters.The first chapter studies the factors conceived in the New Historicism that exert great influences on the forming of historical views of Doctorow. Providing initially with the views mainly from Montrose, an advocate of the New Historicism, that "a literary spirit would be expressed only after exploding the mystery of history and peeling off the historical feint", this chapter analyzes the relationship between text and history, which highly coordinates with Doctorow's historical point of view that history is "written and rewritten from one generation to another", which applies theoretical sustention for the third chapter to discuss the figure of Daniel.Chapter two discusses narration techniques employed in the novel, which favors Daniel or Doctorow to accomplish interpretation of society, humanity and history. In terms of narrative voice, the first person and the omniscient third person interweave in The Book of Daniel. The two voices blend with each other sometimes, and go against each other occasionally. The need to identify the narrator allows readers to experience the course for large movement without missing a single personal conflict. In this case, Daniel searches for the explanation of reality and life on the base of "talking" to Doctorow. Following the analysis of narrative voice, the thesis presents pun images that Daniel grabs as fragments to construct his own political perspective and his value system for life. Finally, the thesis talks about the narrative mode in The Book of Daniel. Despite the ambiguity of images, it is the narrative mode which threads a line of images to complete a description of a certain event, which caters to the standard of readers for verity.The third chapter compares Daniel and his namesake in Bible and analyzes how Daniel adapts himself to the turbulence of American society from structure and motif aspects. Also, the thesis discusses the figuration of Daniel, who is a kid supposed to receive love but have an obscure view about love when experiencing his beloved parents' electrocution. All this foreshadows his later callosity and inner treachery.Through the analysis of narration techniques and contents in The Book of Daniel, the thesis discloses function of E. L. Doctorow's historical point of view and his effective narration possibly for the future writing.