A Study On The Emperor’s Children From The Perspective Of Ethical Literary Criticism

Claire Messud,one of the most talented American young writers,has twice been nominated for PEN/Faulkner Award.The Emperor’s Children,as her the most famous novel,was published in the United States in 2006 and immediately attracted extensive and high attention in the critics.The novel has been well received by many media.It was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize and was named as the best book of the year by New York Times in 2006.The Emperor’s Children is set in New York from March to November in 2001.In this novel,Claire Messud focuses on the ethical conflicts,confusions and rebirth of a group of cultural elites in New York before and after the 9/11 terrorist attack.Messud’s works enjoy great popularity in foreign countries and cause a lot of research in domestic academia.However,the literary analysis of The Emperor’s Children is limited to the perspectives of the personality theory and the identity construction,and it is rarely studied from the perspective of ethical literary criticism.Ethical literary criticism is an active exploration made by Professor Nie Zhenzhao on the basis of traditional western ethical criticism.This theory holds that literature is a product of history and aims to analyze and interpret literary works in a specific ethical environment from a historical perspective.Based on ethical literary criticism,this thesis explores the growth process of the main characters from different ethical conflicts to ethical selections in different ethical environments.The thesis consists of three parts: the introduction,the main body and the conclusion.The first part is the introduction which includes the introduction to the author Claire Messud and the novel The Emperor’s Children,literature review,theory of ethical literary criticism as well as research motivations,significance and questions.The second part is the main body of the thesis,including three chapters.The first chapter analyzes the specific ethical environments of the novel from three aspects: collision between new liberalism and neo-conservatism,prosperity and crisis of the academic left,and oppression of women in the patriarchal society.In the novel,Murray is the uncrowned emperor of New York’s intelligentsia,with a prominent position,while the young children are unknown to the public.They are not only marginalized in the cultural circles,but also oppressed by patriarchy in their families and careers.The second chapter illustrates three pairs of ethical conflicts in the novel which are manifested as: Marina and Danielle’s ethical conflict of obedience and rebellion to Murray,Bootie and Seeley’s ethical conflict of seeking father and patricide,Murry and his lover Danielle’s ethical conflict of free will and rational will.The third chapter gives a detailed analysis of the ethical selections of the five main characters in the novel after undergoing their ethical conflicts.Marina and Daniel get rid of their dependence on Murry and win spiritual independence;Bootie and Seeley escape from New York to find new careers in Miami and London;Murry chooses to end his affair and return to his family.This thesis concludes that Messud reveals the elite intellectuals’ moral depravity caused by the confusion of spiritual belief and the lack of self-consciousness in contemporary society.From the perspective of literary ethical criticism,this thesis interprets the ethical phenomena and ethical questions contained in The Emperor’s Children,which not only provides a new perspective for interpreting the novel,but also provides the readers with moral enlightenment that the individual should keep independent spirit,pursue self-worth,and act in accordance with the ethical norms to become an independent and moral person.