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Inescapable Absurdity And Hopelessness

Posted on:2017-09-08Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:T T LongFull Text:PDF
GTID:2335330482486044Subject:English Language and Literature
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Evelyn Waugh is one of the most distinguished novelists and stylists in the field of modern English literature. Throughout his whole life, he has created many works, including novels, travel books, short stories, biographies and so on. His works are highly honored by bitter satire. A Handful of Dust, as one of his early satirical novels, generally is regarded as his best novel by many critics. Taking its name from T. S Eliot's The Waste Land, this novel provides readers a vivid panorama of the wasteland-like modern society and exposes characters' hopelessness in the absurd society.In A Handful of Dust, there are three quite different settings: Hetton, London and Amazonian jungle. And a close reading will find that this novel has a strong sense of spatiality. Although it has been noticed that those places and spaces in the novel both refect and affect character development, the social as well as the cultural property behind these spaces still needs a further study.This thesis endeavors to interpret the theme of absurdity and hopelessness in A Handful of Dust from the perspective of Spatial Criticism. An analysis of the metaphoric meaning of these spaces can find that these spaces in A Handful of Dust reflect not only characters' personalities, but also the wasteland-like state of the modern society. The body of this thesis is composed of three chapters: chapter one discusses the confined physical space in this novel including Hetton Abbey, London flats, and the Amazonian jungle, revealing the spatial characteristic of hopelessness of the three physical spaces and characters' depression and hopelessness caused by the isolation and alienation of the three physical spaces; chapter two elaborates on the corrupted social space of Hetton, London and Brazil, presenting the absurd and wasteland-like state of the three places from the perspectives of religion, morality and culture; chapter three explores the empty mental space of Tony and Brenda, exposing characters' hopeless and absurd situation in the modern society as well as the ills of the modern society. And finally, this thesis comes to a conclusion that the physical space, the social space and the mental space of the protagonists all reflect the absurdity and hopelessness of the modern life and for these characters the situation of being hopeless and the sense of absurdity are inescapable.
Keywords/Search Tags:Evelyn Waugh, Spatial Criticism, physical space, social space, mental space
PDF Full Text Request
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