The Literary Artistry In New Grub Street From The Perspective Of Adorno’s Culture Industry Theory

George Robert Gissing, a great realist writer in late19thcentury, admires traditionalclassic literature and yearns for being an intellectual all his life. However, his dream ofpursuing artistic perfection is overwhelmed by the trend of commercialization of literaturein late19thcentury. New Grub Street, one of his representative works, is named as his bestnovel. This novel deeply reflects the trend of literature commercialization at the end of19thcentury; it expresses Gissing’ s detestation of mass culture and popular literature, andhis pessimism of this literary trend through depicting two groups of writers who holdcompletely opposite artistic concepts as well as some fluctuation of their careers andmarriages. Therefore, as one of the important themes of New Grub Street,commercialization of literature has been attentioned widely. Nevertheless, the intrinsiccharacteristics and artistic attributes of literary works existed in this novel are rarelyexplored.Based on the above understanding and taking the historical background of thisnovel—the monopoly capitalism into consideration, this thesis, from the perspective ofmass culture and in the light of Adorno’s culture industry theory, explores literary artistryof the literary works in New Grub Street from four aspects, namely sameness,manipulation, visualization and amusement, hence to reveal the nature of late19thcenturyliterature. This thesis first analyzes characters’ writing features to reflect the essence andcriteria of their writings. Second, it analyzes the influence of the writings on the writersthrough development of plots in the novel and relationship between Gissing’s lives andNew Grub Street. Finally, it detects the reasons leading to this literature trend and theinfluence on society, writers and readers through the social context where the textgenerates. The above analysis indicates that literature in late19thcentury is distancingitself from traditional literature: the former standardized with vulgarity, entertainment,sensory enjoyment and was purposive to obtain maximum profit, which has lost theliterary artistry in the traditional sense; Gissing, as a traditional intellectual pursing artistic perfection, cannot endure vulgarization of literature and art, which finally change into theinstrument of public recreation. Therefore, this novel is suffused with ironic andpessimistic tone of Gissing.In the light of Adorno’s culture industry theory, this thesis analyzes the issue ofliterary artistry in Gissing’s New Grub Street and his attitude towards the literary trend inlate19thcentury, hoping to widen and deepen research on New Grub Street. Meanwhile,through explaining the intrinsic characteristics of the literary creation in late19thcentury,this thesis expects to explore the bad impact of commercialized literature on the socialatmosphere, writers and readers’ artistic appreciation abilities and human nature. Besides,this thesis also expects to reveal the weaknesses of monopoly industrial civilization andinstrumental rationality, thus to arouse our meditation on modern literary writings.