Road Of Reforming

The famous English author William Somerset Maugham has been known as 'The Master of Story-telling'.His novels have been translated into many languages and highly praised by his readers all around the world.However,despite the reputation Maugham enjoyed among the public,he had never been truly admitted by the so-called 'elite' literature groups at his time.Such phenomenon that there is a wide gap between Maugham's status in readers and critics is typical,known as the'Maugham Problem'.In the following thesis,basing on the new tendency of studies on Somerset Maugham in English academic fields,I reconsider the dominant literature trend 'Modernism' in the discourse of English literature critics,thinking that the "Maugham Problem" is caused mainly by the fact that his creation ideals and practices did not meet the literature criteria set by his peer'Modernist' writers.In fact,Somerset Maugham's novels has been changing and reforming continually to adapt his period and his readers,including absorbing and expanding large amounts of literary ideas and skills from Modernism creatively.Moreover,the characters in Somerset Maugham's novels generally possess modern consciousness,spending no effort to find suitable life paths for themselves in an unstable modern society.In a word,obvious features of aesthetics modernity can be observed from Somerset Maugham's views on novels and his creating practices.