Shakespeare's "Julius·Caesar": An Exploration In The Perspective Of New Historicism

In the field of Shakespearean play's research, critics attached great importance to his comics, tragedies and histories. However, study on Shakespeare's four roman dramas, including"Julius Caesar","Antony and Cleopatra","Titus Andronicus"and"Coriolanus", is relatively slow. And this thesis is trying to arouse people's concern for it in academic circles.The thesis studies"Julius Caesar"from the perspective of New Historism in order to explore the intertextuality between"text"and"history". Besides, Caesar's political intention at the point of his death is reconstructed through the analysis of power discourse, thus reflects the severe social crisis in the late reign of the Queen Elithabeth and eventually infers Shakespeare's ideal blueprint for the country, that is,"All that belongs to Caesar should be returned to Caesar".The whole thesis is consists of three parts.The first part serves as an introduction, in which the present study on"Julius Caesar"is reviewed and the prospect for this study is stated. In the body of the thesis, the writer firstly reread the play by using the contradictory unity of Janus faces as the analysis point. Secondly, Michel Foucault's analysis of power discourse is being used to study this play in the purpose of evaluating Shakespeare's ideal blueprint for the country from the point of view of"Cultural Poetics". Thirdly, the writer focuses on Caesar's death as a political event, trying to discover the essence of the tragedy and putting forward a hypothesis of"Caesar was murdered on his own initiative".The ending part of this thesis is a conclusion. The writer emphasizes that New Historism, as a post-modern literature criticism, is outstanding for its"non-sectarianism"while inevitably has its own limitations as any literature theory does.