The Duality Of V.S. Naipaul's Nonfiction Writing

V.S.Naipaul(1932--2018),a British writer Of Indian descent,was a typical crossover survival writer.He liked to explore the third world through the eye of literature and then present it in exploratory writing,which mostly reflected the non-fiction writing style of both objective documentary and subjective construction.The masterpiece of this kind,The Masque of Africa(2010)was completed through artistic construction after him returning to the UK based on his African travel experience.This work presents readers the real experience of the post-colonial African belief world from the author's first perspective and reflects Naipaul's thoughts on African civilization.This thesis aims to grasp the dual characteristics of Naipaul's non-fiction writing,namely documentary and literary,from the perspective of the representation of African belief world in The Masque ofA frica,analyzes how the author Naipaul intervened in the objective reality and penetrated his subjective attitude towards African civilization,and discusses Naipaul's view on civilization combining with his experience and reflection on African travel in the textThe main part of the thesis consists of three chapters.In terms of the text content,the author sorts out and summarizes the characteristics of the images of African religious civilization,which partly reflects Naipaulrs literary thought of depicting reality.In the form of the text,this thesis studies his subjective construction strategy of the African belief world,which is the concrete manifestation of his "intervention" in reality.This paper further discusses Naipaul's thinking on African belief dilemma behind the objective documentary and subjective construction and attempts to reveal Naipaul's cultural concept and value standpoint by connecting the text with the reality.The first chapter discusses the African religious scene with a strong sense of reality presented in The Masque of Africa.Following Naipaul's gaze,the reader can see the diversity of religious beliefs embodied in many believers.These characters come from a variety of backgrounds and have distinctive features.Through the perspective of these characters' spiritual dilemma,the work reflects that the western cultural input after the settlement made the former colonial countries continue to sink into the mire of faith.With the gradual deepening of Naipaul's observation,he also revealed the essence of the important position of African traditional faith in the pluralistic religious pattern.The African traditional beliefs he describes have a grip on all aspects of human life that no other religion can match,and he believes this is closely related to the violent nature of traditional African beliefs.The second chapter explains Naipaul's construction strategy in presenting the African world of faith and his "intervention" in the writing process through the literariness of the text.When investigating African beliefs,he not only examined them calmly from the outside,but also unconsciously intervened in them.Therefore,he integrated more personal emotions into the text,and the narrative voice was able to "appear",and the use of narrative methods and rhetorical skills strengthened the characteristics of the subjective construction of the work.In terms of narrative structure,it breaks through the linear narrative of traditional travelogue and freely transforms between the reality and the past.In terms of image selection,the selected images of "forest" and "ruins" have both African local color and intertextuality with his previous African writings.Rhetorically,the work generally uses verbal irony and situational irony,so as to highlight the binary opposition between the surface of African belief and the true form.Naipaul's methods of reproducing the African world of belief reflect his negative critical consciousness.The third chapter summarizes and analyzes Naipaul's African cultural view reflected by religious belief in The Masque of Africa.Despite Naipaul's efforts to conceal his voice in writing about the African faith world,it is not difficult for the reader to detect his disappointment with the post-colonial African cultural landscape through his objective documentary and subjective construction.Seeing the results of the "mimicry" approach to achieve cultural redemption adopted by black Africans,he argues that there is still a long way to go to achieve the modernization of civilization of Africa.His caustic satire and merciless criticism originated from his westernized ideas,so he finally showed the "universalist" value orientation to the maladies and pains of African religious culture.Generally speaking,from the perspective of Naipaul's nonfiction writing,this thesis discusses that Naipaul's literary representation of the African faith world is a subjective construction based on calm observation,thus the work has the dual nature of objective documentary and subjective construction.First of all,the work is presented as a travelogue,which created a sense of reality by interspersing a large number of others' narrations.As a matter of fact,when Naipaul reflected on his trip to Africa,he used literary strategies to convey his subjective feelings in a subtle way,and indicate the idea of "universalism".In today's globalized world,the third world is often aphasia in the dialogue between civilizations.The study of the faith writing in The Masque ofA frica is of heuristic significance for people to ponder the future of the third world civilization.