On The History Writing Of Midnight's Children

Salman Rushdie(1947-)is a British-Indian novelist.The special living environment and profound historical background have contributed to his unique perspective in the writing of history.He was born in a Muslim merchant family in Bombay,India.His writing style has a distinctive characteristic.His literature works inherit the Indian traditional literary characteristics and absorb postmodern art technique.They are characterized by humorous language and postcolonial theme,which help him to form his unique writing style.While Salman Rushdie is famous as a writer in the world,his literary works are filled with his deep understanding of and reflection on history.The features of history writing methods are also rich.Therefore history writing has a very high research value in the works of Rushdie.Midnight's Children was published in 1981,which is a classic novel of historical writing.Midnight 's Children with about 580 pages has magnificent momentum.Its content covers the entire subcontinent of India,such as politics,religion,culture,social customs and reform and so on.It also tells the story of conflict between the old and the new,cultures and ideas.The narrative method of the novel is very flexible,combining realistic narration with fantastic narration,integrating myths,fables,folklore into political commentary.All these contribute to Salman Rushdie's being a famoues writer and Midnight's Children a popular novel.The novel is an award-winning masterpiece as soon as the English version was published in 1981.Based on the post-modernism literature theory-new historicism and historiographic metafiction,this thesis adopts the research method of close reading,analyzes and interprets the historical writing content and historical writing form in Midnight's Children.It intends to make an overall analysis of the process of the historicity of texts and the textuality of history in Midnight's Children.Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children has grand historical writing content of family history-Saleem and his three-generation development,which is closely related to the South Asian subcontinent's political war,religion,culture and other social aspects of national history before and after independence of India.Standing on the middle-man's position,the narrator in the novel has a variety of voices,perspectives,and a more personal,subjective way of writing.The novel is written in the form of historical writing of postmodernism,making the historical circumstance personalization,diversification,fragmentation,fuzzification,fantasy,and recreation,resulting in rethinking and new understanding of the true history.It expresses the author's attempt to deconstruct the authoritative historical writing of the authority,so as to reconstruct a new understanding of Indian development history,and reflect on the complex religions in India and the problems left over by the colonialism.The thesis firstly introduces the Salman Rushdie's growth experience,his writing career,his writing background and the main content of the novel.Then it reviews the research achievements related to the author and his Midnight's Children from different perspectives at home and abroad.The body part of the thesis focuses on two parts:one is the historical writing content,the other the historical writing features.The thesis reaches a conclusion in the end.The process of the historicity of texts and the textuality of history expresses the author's reflection on the historical truth and guides the readers' reading and thinking.