The Interaction Between History And Text In Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child

The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing is a text that produces and is produced by history. Based on detailed analysis of the textuality of history and the historicity of text, this thesis intends to explore the interaction between history and text in The Fifth Child by analyzing historical events—the Soviet-Afghan War during 1970 s and 1980 s and the financial crisis during 1960s-1970s—implied in the novella and their connotations, influences of these historical events and Lessing‘s living experiences on the writing of the novella, and the novella‘s impacts on people‘s cognition of history. First, this thesis discusses the historical events implied in the novella and construes how the novella textualizes these historical events. Then, it tries to reveal the historicity of The Fifth Child: how the history of war and financial crisis of 1960s-1980 s influences Lessing‘s writing, and how this literary text contributes to the construction of modern history in terms of people‘s cognition of history via the analysis of the text and readers‘ reviews and criticism. Finally, the conclusion is made that in the process of the interaction between history and text, history of 1960s-1980 s is textualized in The Fifth Child and the text is historicized under the influence of history and people‘s cognition of history.