On The Historical Writing In The Golden Notebook

Known as the evergreen in the literary world, Doris Lessing is one of the mostoutstanding contemporary British female writers. With her multiple themes, uniqueperspectives and varied writing styles, she has received admiration and continuousattentions from the critics at home and abroad. Her masterpiece The Golden Notebookwas published in1962, which helped establish Lessing’s status and reputation as amaster in literature and eventually made her win the Nobel Prize for Literature in2007.With distinctive artistic techniques, this novel depicts a social panorama of themid-20th century to readers from the perspective of a single female writer Anna. Thestory takes place after World War II, which is a particular historical context. Theissues described in the novel are universal, such as colonialism, racial discrimination,war, political struggles, etc. They are not just confined to one country but extend tothe whole world. It can be said that the novel shows a historical panorama of theentire world in the mid-20th century. Therefore, applying the theory of NewHistoricism, this thesis aim at analyzing Doris Lessing’s historical writing in TheGolden Notebook as well as her historical consciousness embodied in the novel.Besides introduction and conclusion, this thesis is divided into three chapters.The first chapter analyzes the content of historical writing in The Golden Notebook.Lessing reproduced the historical context of that time from three aspects ofcolonization, war and politics, expressing her abomination of colonialism and war aswell as her critique of blind faith. The second chapter analyzes the form of historicalwriting in The Golden Notebook and its effect. With a combination of netlike narrativestructure and the techniques of collage, montage and metafiction, Lessing blurred theboundary between reality and fiction, thus reinterpreting the history of that time. Thethird chapter discusses Lessing’s historical consciousness embodied in The GoldenNotebook and its formation. Lessing affirmed the role of individuals in thedevelopment of history. She believes that history is moving forward in the constantretrogression, just like the myth of Sisyphus. As an individual, one should face thechallenges in life actively and bravely and devote themselves to pushing forward thehistory.This thesis finally comes to this conclusion: The Golden Notebook is a workwhich combines history and text. Through the juxtaposition of reality and fiction,Lessing has successfully broken the boundary between history and text with herexcellent artistic techniques, and ultimately realized the questioning and reflection onhistory.