A New Historical Approach To Midnight's Children

Since 1981 when Midnight's Children was published to 2008 when the work won the Best of Booker, Salman Rushdie and Midnight's Children keep to be the focus of people's discussion. This thesis provides a new perspective for the reader to appreaciate Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children appling the new historicism theory.The thesis discusses the author's writing motivation, the relationship between the individual autobiography and the public history, the non-linear narrative in history construction, the physical factors in meaning formation and women's function in history construction, hoping to illuminate the common notions Rushdie and the new historicist shares.The first chapter gives a brief introduction of the author, Salman Rushdie, the work, Midnight's Children, and some notions which connect the work and the new historicism.The second chapter dicusses the writing motivation of the author, and gives a general introduction of Rushdie's writing style.The third chapter is divided to four different parts to illuminate the common conceptions that the individual autobiography and the public history shares, in what way Rushdie emphasis the non-linear narrative as obvious character in history construction, analysing the function of organ senses in meaning formation, and the subject of the common people's history seperately, appling the technique of close reading to the text. The fouth chapter delivers a brife conclusion of the common notion shareing by Rushdie and the new historicists, meanwhile, shows the significance of the thesis, hoping it can offer some aspiration to the reader.