The Inheritance And Innovation In Updike’s Rabbit Tetralogy

Iohn Updike was an American contemporary realism novelist, and his Rabbit Tetralogy enjoyed a high reputation in drawing the soul of middle bourgeoisie in America. The novel overall showed the life of middle bourgeoisie and at the same time profoundly dissected the growth course of them. The readability work--Rabbit Tetralogy was familiar to the most people in the world and it had abundant interpretations from different angles, thus causing the study and explanation of many domestic and foreign scholars. However,both domestic and foreign researches were rarely aimed at Updike’s inheritance and innovation in realism. Therefore this paper from the perspective of realism initiation novel was attempted to study the Rabbit Tetralogy which illustrated the realism still keep a living life in modern Western society.The thesis had four main chapters. In the preface,the paper took a brief introduction to Updike ’s works and gave a comprehensive overview of current research about his work. The frist chapter presented the theories of realism in literature indicating the Rabbit Tetralogy should be a realistic novel. The second chapter classified the Rabbit Tetralogy as a realistic initiation novel by theoretical definition and historical review of classical realistic novels. The third chapter indicated the novel modernity artistic innovation and transcendence of tradition realist novels with analyzing the modern emotion and modernism artistic expression in Rabbit Tetralogy. The fourth chapter from the three aspects as growth method, sex religion and tragedy ending respectively showed the novel surpassed the traditional initiation novels. In conclusion, the thesis revealed the remained charming of realism literature by summarizing the Rabbit Tetralogy which not only inherited the excellent of tradition but also infused the new skills in realistic novels.