A Study Of The Marginal Culture In Caramelo From The Perspective Of New Historicism

Sandra Cisneros?1954-?,a Mexican American female writer,is an outstandingethnic literature writer.Her works not only contain criticism of the oppression of the mainstream white minority groups,but also deeply analyze various problems caused by the collision of the white culture and the ethnic culture.Widely circulated House on the Mango Street has won great reputation for her.Caramelo,as her third novel,has been studied and analyzed by many scholars at home and abroad from the aspects of races,woman's issues and narrative techniques,but few scholar has analyzed this work from the perspective of New Historicism.New historicism focuses on the analysis of the relationship between text and history,which has a very positive significance to understand the historical situation that the marginal culture could not subvert oppression in American social life in the 19th-20th centuries.Therefore,this thesis attempts to use the theory of New Historicism to analyze the culture of the marginal groups in the novel,and expose the unfair suffering of the marginal groups in the novel and the resistance and deconstruction of the marginal culture to the mainstream culture.Finally,this thesis analyzes the counterattack of the mainstream culture encountered with the subversion of marginal culture,reveals the historical situation of the contradiction and confrontation between the mainstream culture and the marginal culture,and reveals the historical inevitability that the marginal culture fails to subvert the oppression of the mainstream culture in the novel.According to the historicity of text,this thesis firstly analyzes the oppression and discrimination towards marginal culture in the 19th and 20th centuries in American history.Then,this thesis analyzes the deconstruction of mainstream culture by marginal culture through literary fiction and literary creation from the perspective of texutality of history.Through fictional literary creation,the novel integrates literature and history,textualizes history,reconstructs history through literary narration,reappears the resistance of marginal culture under the macro historical background,and deconstructs the white mainstream power and unitary narrative authority.According to the theory of“Subversion”and“Containment”of Greenblatt,the third chapter puts forward that literary text,as a product of collective negotiation and exchange,is a site where various ideologies compete with each other.Greenblatt thought social energies circled from social history into literary texts.Though literary reappearance,history and texts mirror each other.So the root of the failure of marginal groups in the novel in subverting mainstream culture must focus on the history of 19^thand 20^thcenturies.The fictionality of the characters and the multi-dimensional narration break the single dimension of the traditional historical narration.Readers can interpret the realistic meaning implied in the fictional text from this fictional ideology,and interpret the historical root and historical inevitability of the marginalized culture which was suppressed in the 19th century.Cisneros's Caramelo reveals the injustice suffered by the marginal culture,andadvocates the readers of later generations to actively explore the complex relationship between the marginal culture and the mainstream culture in history.The exploration of their relationship can also realize the multi-interpretation of history.