A Study On The Image Of Flaneur In Saul Bellow's Herzog

In the context of modernity,the strolling has transformed from a simple physical behavior into an instructive survival strategy.In Herzog,Saul Bellow's creation of flaneur Herzog is his unique way to wake the world from its dream.At present,studies are mainly carried out to interpret the novel from the perspectives of Jewishness,existentialism and narrative techniques,while less attention has been devoted to flaneur image involved in this novel.For this reason,employing Walter Benjamin's modern interpretation of “flaneur”,this thesis takes Herzog as a modern flaneur with the aim to excavate his heroic dimension in the era of high capitalism.The thesis consists of three parts,introduction,main body and conclusion.The introduction contains literature review,research questions,methodology and organization of thesis,and it focuses on the construction of Benjamin's theory of modern flaneur which serves as the research methodology.The main body contains three chapters.Chapter one points out that Herzog's strolling results from a series of realistic motivations.In modern society,the prevalence of technology and capital makes wasteland the synonymy for metropolis,and the rapid changes of world and urban life scenes make shock experience the universal psychological model of the crowd,and the alienation among individuals and the individual himself makes people the familiar strangers,reflecting the crises covered by the capitalist material civilization.Flaneur Herzog is the product of this background.Chapter two points out that Herzog's strolling in essence is a destructive adventure.In his strolling activities,flaneur Herzog's Saturnian melancholy endows him with the perfect gesture to observe the modern world,and his archaeological memory enables him to break the eternal image of the past,and his collective writing lets him wrench elements of everyday life from their original contexts,from which flaneur Herzog reduces the modern society into the ruins with fragments.Chapter three points out that Herzog's strolling makes it possible for him to attain the ultimate discernment.In the ruins brought about by strolling,Herzog destructs the linear progressive history and blasts “now-time” out of the history chain in which he brings about a real state of emergency.Consequently,he identifies the crisis of modernity,which contributes to his awakening from the dream world of high capitalism and realization of spiritual redemption with positive attitude.The thesis concludes that flaneur Herzog is the product,the spectator and rebel of modern society.Through flaneur Herzog,Bellow generates a panorama literature of the era of high capitalism,which represents the ruined nature of modern society;at the same time,Bellow elevates hope beyond despair in the ruins for human beings,which is the novel's introspection on modernity.