On The Disintegration Of The Flyte Community In Brideshead Revisited

Evelyn Waugh(1903-1966)is a famous twentieth-century British satirist.Brideshead Revisited(1945)is his first serious novel,in which Waugh vividly presents the social landscape of Britain during the interwar years by using the first-person retrospective narrative.So far,the studies made on Brideshead Revisited by scholars both at home and abroad have mainly focused on its religious theme and nostalgia theme,while few scholars have made an intensive study on the issue of community of the novel from the sociological perspective.Ferdinand T?nnies(1855-1936)is one of the representatives of community theory.He holds that community is a “living organism” growing naturally by the ties of blood,emotion,belief,land etc.And once the community loses the bond that sustains its life during the development process,it will face the crisis of disintegration.In Brideshead Revisited,Waugh portrays a small-scale rural community which is centered on the Flytes,an aristocratic Catholic family.This community has gone through the baptism of more than two hundred years,however,under the attack of various destructive factors,such as secularism and materialism,it gradually loses the ties maintaining its life and eventually disintegrates.Based on the understanding of the background and main content of Brideshead Revisited,this thesis attempts to employ T?nnies' s community theory to investigate the disintegration of the Flyte community from three aspects: belief,emotion and space,to reveal the relations between the Flyte community's disintegration,the cultural psychology of the British people at that time and the historical context of the interwar years,and then to find out Waugh's deep thinking of the social reality of postwar Britain.The first chapter analyzes the collapsing of shared religious belief of the Flyte community.Catholicism is the common religious belief of the Flyte community members.As the will of the community,it is an important force to maintain the unity and peace of the community life.However,with Lady Marchmain and Bridey's distortion of the nature of Catholicism and Sebastian and Julia's betrayal of their Catholic belief,Catholicism loses both its authority among community members and its ability to guide the community life.The second chapter discusses the disappearing of universal intimate emotion of the Flyte community.Interpersonal intimate sentiment is the emotional foundation of the establishment and maintenance of the Flyte community.However,as the love relationship among lovers breaks down and the familiar relationship among kinfolks is estranged,the common intimacy among community members is gravely damaged and the concordant community life is unable to sustain.The third chapter explores the vanishing of common living space of the Flyte community.Brideshead estate is the place where community people have long lived together.However,being attracted by modern urban life,people leave Brideshead and pour into London in succession.Gradually,Brideshead loses its role in community people's life,becoming a place for people to have fun and rest.With its inhabitants leaving away,Brideshead accordingly declines,and after the Second World War breaks out,it is requisitioned as a wartime camp and completely destroyed by the military.Hence,the spatial bond that once bound people together breaks down.Based on the above analysis,this thesis draws the conclusion that Brideshead Revisited is an elegy Evelyn Waugh writes for old rural community.Through the disintegration of the Flyte community,Waugh on the one hand expresses his profound criticism and reflection on the social reality of postwar Britain,and on the other hand shows his nostalgia of organic rural community.Faced with the disappearance of organic rural community,Waugh,as a cultural conservative,is undoubtedly regretful but also powerless.He soberly realizes that in a highly industrialized modern society the demise of rural community is irrecoverable.