The Interpretation Of Pride And Prejudice From The Perspective Of Ethical Literary Criticism

As one of the classic literary works of the 19th century, Pride and Prejudice has been drawing the attention of many scholars at home and abroad since it was published in 1813, in the meanwhile, lots of research theories are applied to the study of this novel including translation, linguistics, eco-feminist and literary stylistics theories. However, there are only few applications of ethical literary criticism to Pride and Prejudice. In this thesis, the British ethical phenomena of the late 18th century and the early 19th century will be interpreted from the perspective of ethical literary criticism. In June, 2004, Professor Nie Zhenzhao firstly presented the conception of ethical literary criticism systematically, constructed its theoretical framework, applied ethics to the literature and broke the ice of China’s long-term "aphasia state" in literary theory, which is significant to foreign literature study in China. Before writing this thesis, there are three phases to prepare. One phase is to read the novel carefully and profoundly and find out the ethical factors. The other is to read many theoretical works and papers that studying the ethical literary criticism. The third one is that this author tries to interpret the novel with ethical literary criticism. The originality of this thesis lies in interpretation of Pride and Prejudice especially the interpretation of British social ethics and Jane Austen’s ethical appeals from three aspects of ethical literary criticism, namely, man and nature, man and society, man and others. This thesis aims at analyzing the ethical factors causing the social events and the fate of the characters with the ethical viewpoints, giving the ethical explanation of the events, characters and problems etc. in the novel and making ethical judgments from a historical perspective. Thus, this thesis tries to offer a different perspective for study of Pride and Prejudice and give a tentative understanding and interpretation of the work. Besides, this thesis attempts to expand the application of ethical literary criticism to the interpretation of the novel. Last but not least, all these attempts may make a reference for the construction of the contemporary humanistic spirit in the foreign literature study.