A New-historicism Study Of The Feast Of The Goat

Mario Vargas Llosa is a great novelist and literary critic,and he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010.His works include 16 novels,2 collections,5 literary reviews and 1 memoir.His novel The Feast of the Goat that published in 2000 ranked second in the "1982-2007 Top 100 Spanish Novels",just behind Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera.This novel reconstitutes the darkest and cruelest era of Trujillo's dictatorship in Dominican history through a woman's self-narrative,a group of assassinators' s conspiracy and the dictator's day's life.This paper consists of three parts: introduction,text and conclusion.For the introduction part,firstly,it will introduce Llosa himself and his literary and political career;secondly,it will sort out the research status of The Feast of the Goat;finally,it will briefly introduce the New Historicism as the theoretical foundation of the thesis.For the text,the first chapter focuses on "the historicity of the texts",it will discuss the relationship between the novel and the author himself as well as Peru's social environment,including the interaction between the novel and the author's personal life experiences,the social and political situation at that time;the great influence of his father's autocratic education,the dark life of military academy,the presidential election experience in his later life and the Peru's president Fujimori's democratic game on the writing of this novel.And the content reflected in the novel and the impact of criticism of the Dominican dictatorship on Peru's reality are discussed,it also explores the adaptation of the novel into a film after its publication to achieve the extension of the text.The second chapter takes "the textuality of histories" as the core point,exploring the relationship between the novel and other historical documents.It indicates that this novel is Llosa's recreation on the basis of existing documents,and they all selectively manipulates historical materials from their own point of view,and also participates in the process of the reconstruction of history.The third chapter further explores the subversive narratives in The Feast of the Goat,such as Llosa's tragic treatment of the story's ending,the cognition of dictator's strong self-consciousness,and the prominence of the woman's discourses and memories.The conclusion summarizes the full text,The Feast of The Goat not only has historical influence,but also its historical narration has literary nature.The Feast of the Goat is a novel which integrates fiction and history.Its birth is not only influenced by the specific historical and cultural context,and the novel itself is an active factor in shaping history.Although on the surface,the novel is only about the contrast between text and history,but in fact,it contains a deeper meaning.Llosa see the impossibility of democracy in Latin America,and the importance of marginal figures,whose discourses and memories are significant in reshaping national history.