The Study Of The Marginal People In Caryl Phillips’ Novels

Caryl Phillips has already been taken as a British main stream writer among the writers who are from Caribbean countries besides V.S.Naipaul.Phillips is a prolific writer who has published ten novels,four essay collections and four plays and he has received numerous awards for his fictional and nonfictional works.As a black immigrant,Phillips pays a lot of attention to the experience of people of the African diaspora in England,the Caribbean and the United States.The Nature of Blood,Crossing the River and Cambridge are three representative works of Caryl Phillips,in which Phillips portrays different kinds of marginal people,including black people,Jewish people and white women in different periods of history from the Renaissance to the Second World War.It is presented in Phillips’ novels that the marginal people not only exist between different races,but also exist in the same race.Through analyzing the causes,living conditions and their struggles with the fates of the marginal groups from the perspective of the theory of marginal man and marginalization in Caryl Phillips’ s three representative novels,the thesis tries to find out Phillips’ s ideas of the key point of helping the marginal groups to get out of the dilemma of identity and to construct the equal status with “the center groups”.The thesis consists of the introduction,three main chapters and the conclusion.The introduction briefly presents the life of writer,the three novels,Marginal Man Theory,literature review on Phillips’ novels and proposes the central argument,research method and significance of the thesis.Chapter one to chapter three discuss the marginal identity,causes of marginality and strategies of getting rid of marginality and the ending of the three different marginal groups separately,presenting the historical environment and development of marginal groups.In conclusion part,the thesis is summarized and stresses Caryl Phillips’ concern on disadvantaged groups and longing for equality of center and marginality.