Bleak Millennium: A Thematic Study Of Martin Amis's London Fields

Martin Amis, an eminent figure in contemporary British literature, is recognized as a word virtuoso and major postmodern experimentalist. Due to his preference of style over content, Amis's critics often pay more attention to the forms rather than the themes in his works. Likewise, London Fields, Amis's longest novel, has been examined at length in terms of its exquisite structure, while its subtle themes are largely ignored.Thus, the present thesis attempts a thematic study of London Fields, concentrating on its urban decay, love and death as well as media-saturated hyperreality based on Western Marxist criticism, Freudian notion of Thanatos and Baudrillardian theory of mass media respectively.Through illustrating the three themes, the present author examines London Fields as a problem novel and Martin Amis as a humanistic novelist.