An Analysis Of The Grapes Of Wrath From The Perspective Of New Historicism

John Steinbeck is a writer of Great Depression in America, whose works exert animportant position in the history of American literature as well as world literature. Heawarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in1962for his masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath, oneof the American classics. It tells a story about millions of bankrupt farmers represented by theJoad family being driven away from their land and home to the promised land California inGreat Depression.In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck depicts the sufferings of those poor people in his agewith a ruthless revelation of social weakness, opening a door for readers to learn the realsituation of American society in1930s. The novel has been studied for thousands of times andearned the author a great reputation and popularity.The thesis is divided into five parts. The first part is an introductory section of the wholethesis. It includes a brief introduction of John Steinbeck and his novel, The Grapes of Wrath,literature review and the outline of the thesis. Chapter one introduces the major theories ofNew Historicism. It consists of two parts: the “intertextuality of history and text” by LouisMontrose and the “cultural poetics” by Stephen Greenblatt. Each of the two representatives ofNew Historicism made a thorough research and developed the theory from differentperspectives. Then, the next two parts specifically illustrates the application of thetheory―“intertextuality of history and text” in the interpretation of the novel, which contains“historicity of text” and “textuality of history”. Chapter two deals with the historicity of thenovel as a text and tries to interpret its historical meaning through the analysis on thehistorical events including the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl and the Okie Migration inSteinbeck’s time. Chapter three makes a study of the textuality of the novel’s history throughthe analysis of different histories in The Grapes of Wrath constructed by readers in differenttime and of typical characters appeared during this construction of history. In the end, itfocuses on the subversion and containment of the prevailing ideology in the novel accordingto Stephen Greenblatt’s theory, revealing the main characters’ subversion toward thecapitalism and patriarchy and the containment of subversion in the novel.In a word, this thesis aims to analyze The Grapes of Wrath from the perspective of NewHistoricism, focusing on the mutual relationship of history and literature which is ignored byother schools, to interpret the text by putting it back into its historical and social contexts atthe time when it was created.