Scientific Fantasy Apocalypse: Argumentation On Michel Houellebecq’s Novels

Michel Houellebecq (1958-) is the most famous and controversial author in France. He is world-famous for his bad-boy personal style among the literary circles and incorrect in politics. His novels mixed science fantasy, religion and literature together. The sexual behaviors and speeches of the characters in his novels touched upon the practical problems such as hippies, nihilism, porn tourism, clone, asexual propagation, religious conflict, Utopia, population aging and etc. His novel deeply analyzed the commercial society which followed the capitalistic logic. This thesis picked up two of his novels, The Elementary Particles and The Possibility of an Island, to probe into his narrative features and ideological art specialty.Michel Houellebecq already has a considerable influence and cultural significance in the contemporary Hesperian society. But he is less studied and known in China. The introduction part introduced Michel Houellebecq himself and expounded the current status of the study on his two novels above. The first chapter expatiated the narrative methods of his novels by the aid of existing study and revealed the peculiarity of his novels. The second chapter his novels of realism to analyze and the theme of sex, Utopia and Dystopia in his novels. The third chapter probed into the tragic humanism in Michel Houellebecq’s novels and discussed both his nihilistic science revelation and the meaning of his novels.The unique narrative skills which Michel Houellebecq used in The Elementary Particles and The Possibility of an Island didn’t follow the routine timeline in most traditional novels and helped to create a literary world in which the future and present are mixed together. This literary world in his novels fully revealed the possibilities in schema of Kells which is mixed, and has the logic of its own. His novels has obvious features from naturalism existentialism and realism. Also he attended the current practical social problems in France. His novels revealed money and sex as two major themes in capitalism society by showing the time interval after France was affected by American hippie culture, during which time liberalism together with sexual liberation and family disintegration flooded France. With the help of literary imagination, science fantasy and religionary revelation he described a world of the new humanity which is the reflection of tragic humanism. His novels explored the eternal theme of the nihilism, described the pains of nowadays and the emptiness of the apocalypse in the fancied future with acrimonious statement, in which he never abandoned his effort of seeking for redemption, and these two novals are well qualified with the rating as the modern science revelation.