New Historical Analysis Of The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) was one of the most distinguished American novelists in the1920s and a most important representative figure of the Jazz Age. He was regarded as one of the insiders as well as outsiders of the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald partook of the wealth, frivolity and temptations of the time, and meanwhile observed the corruptive nature of the society and kept a cold eye on the performance of his contemporaries.As one of the greatest English novels in the twentieth century, The Great Gatsby did not begin as a success and the initial sales and newspapers reviews were not satisfactory. However, its sales grew steadily after the1930s, especially after Fitzgerald’s death. Now it sells millions of copies every year, and inspires a great amount of theoretical analyses and debates about Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby. There are even three films devoted to the novel. To give a complete answer to the powerful and lasting appeal of The Great Gatsby, some critics owe it to Fitzgerald’s brilliant description craftsmanship, and others study on it from historical and cultural perspectives. In an effort to contribute to the discussion of The Great Gatsby, this thesis attempts to study on this famous American novel with a new form of literary theory and cultural-historical study, New Historicism.This thesis consists of following parts:The Introduction gives a brief overview of Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby, and mainly goes through the research trends of The Great Gatsby at home and abroad.Chapter One to Chapter Three constitutes the main body of this thesis. Following the structure of "Theory-Text Analysis", the main body of this thesis starts from the introduction of New Historicism, and then comes a detailed interpretation of The Great Gatsby respectively under the core concepts of New Historicism-Textuality of History and Historicity of Texts.Chapter One first briefly introduces the framework of New Historicism and its background, preparing for the text analysis in the following part of this thesis. Then it has a comparative study on different development backgrounds and different connotations of "history" in traditional Historicism and New Historicism. Finally this chapter introduces two major representatives of New Historicism:one is Stephen Greenblatt, the founder of this literary theory; the other is Louis Adrian Montrose who brings up the core concepts of New Historicism:Textuality of History and Historicity of Texts.Chapter Two explores real historic events recorded in the novel and interprets the deep meanings of those historic stories under the guidance of Textuality of History. According to New Historicism, history is recorded by text, and text is a window for us to know about the past. But as history recorder’s interest, ideology and cognition varies, literary text is inevitably involved with subjectivity. This thesis selects two of those historic events and tries to interpret them in accord with New Historicism:one is the Fuller-McGee case which discloses the source of mysterious wealth and throws up a tangled web of corruption; the other is Fitzgerald’s love with Ginevra which exposes how people of that time take money-making and pleasure-seeking as their life goal and eventually end up in tragedy.Chapter Three studies the outer influences on The Great Gatsby and the impact of The Great Gatsby on the development of society and history under the guidance of Historicity of Texts. According to New Historicism, literary texts are influenced by the social and historical circumstances in which they were produced and the author’s characteristics, ideology, ethics, etc. In the meanwhile, texts also have the power to shape history. This thesis points out that the society in the1920s went through a rapid change; Fitzgerald’s special family background imprinted him of a paradoxical attitude; and in literary creation, Fitzgerald received great influence from such writers as Eliot and Spengler. All those features embody in The Great Gatsby, and as one of the greatest novels in the1920s, the novel also casts an enduring shadow in the development of society.In the Conclusion part, besides an overall review, the realistic significance and writing value of this thesis are mainly introduced. According to New Historicism, literary study and literary criticism are influenced not only by the social and historical circumstance in which texts are produced, but also by the circumstance in which texts are studied and criticized. Thus New Historicism encourages continuous studies from different backgrounds of time. There is indication that current Chinese society resembles the Jazz Age in some ways. As a theoretical approach, New Historicism provides a unique view of history and text. This thesis therefore attempts to analyze The Great Gatsby from the perspective of New Historicism, in the hope of warning people of the protagonist’s tragedy resulted from wrong life goals and helping people establish a correct outlook on life and values.