American Cold War Fiction In 1950s From The Perspective Of Literary Sociology

Literary sociology is an interdisciplinary perspective that applies sociology in literary studies.It studies the reflection and effect of literature on society,and the influence and regulation of society on literature.Literary sociology mainly highlights the interaction between literary texts and their external background,analyzing and interpreting literary works in light of their historical context.The 1950s witnessed the change of national psyche in the United States from the post-war excitement to the early Cold War repression.During this decade,American economy boomed and American society entered a period of encouraging affluence.At the same time,the establishment of Cold War world order caused anti-Soviet and anti-communist sentiments in the United States.In order to curb the expansion of communism,the Truman administration launched a nationwide loyalty movement,requiring everyone to be loyal to the country.Later,the McCarthyism extended the anti-communist wave to all walks in the United States,causing extreme anxiety and panic in social life,i.e.,Red Scare and Lavender Scare.The society and culture in 1950s exerted great impact on American fiction.The anxiety and confusion caused by economic abundance and political pressure suffocated many Americans.They were nervous and dissatisfied with the society.However,due to the suppression of McCarthyism,they could only live a deviant life of drug abuse,drinking,and exile to challenge social persecution and ideological restraint.Such ambivalent social sentiments found their literary representation in cold war fiction.Among them were Jerome David Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye,Jack Kerouac's On the Road,John Updike's Rabbit,Run and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man that mirrored respectively the then society and culture through characters of different ages and social classes.The thesis analyzes,from the perspective of literary sociology,the four representative novels in their historical discourse to explore their interaction withsociety and culture and reveal their historical significance and the social reality embedded in them.As an addition to the domestic related literature done basically from such traditional literary criticism perspectives as theme,character image and language characteristics,the thesis proposes a potential way of reading literature,integrating texts and their social and cultural discourse.This interdisciplinary way may allow readers to find an intersection of grand history and specific texts,thereby enhancing their literary reading experience and literary criticism competence.