Parody Writing In The Later Novels Of Martin Amis

Martin Amis(1949-)is one of the leading writers in contemporary British literature.After winning the Maugham Prize in 1973 with his debut novel The Rachel Papers,Amis has written such important works as Money,a Suicide Note,Time’s Arrow,or the Nature of the Offence,The Pregnant Widow,and Yellow Dog.As a long-established “stylist” in British,Amis’ s writing style is distinctive,and his novels are rich in material and ideas,while parody provides a helpful way to explore the enriching connotation of his novels.The practice of parody in his novels is not only reflected in the subversion of literary traditions and the exaggerated parody of realistic scenes,but also in the fact that his plays convey a sense of anxiety about postmodern life through metafictional self-fiction and comic exaggeration.This paper selects four novels from Amis’ s middle and late period: Night Train,The Pregnant Widow,Yellow Dog and Lionel Asbo: State of England,while exploring their causes and artistic values by discussing Amis’ s parody performance in the four novels based on a close reading of the text and parody theory.The main body of this paper consists of four chapters.The first chapter analyzes the parody of literary traditions in four novels.The Pregnant Widow shows the double impact of the wave of the sexual revolution on the bodies and minds of young people by recreating the plots and stylistic simulations of such literary classics as Greek mythology,Kafka’s novels,and the vampire Dracula.The Yellow Dog and Lionel Asbo: The State of England use references to Dickens’ novels to show the current decline state of England.And Night Train challenges the logical reasoning of traditional detective novels through its unconventional plot narrative and ending setting.Amis presents readers with an artistic world in which multiple texts are interwoven,reflecting his profound literary skills.The second chapter focuses on the author’s parodic practices of the British royal family,popular music,and mass media in the real world.Amis subverts authority and dissolves the sacred by vilifying and spoofing the British royal family.The incorporation of characters and lyrics from popular music into the novel’s plot construction reflects the profound influence of popular culture.The practice of parodying the expressions of mass media such as newspapers and advertisements reflects the dilemma of the proliferation of semantics and the difficulty of finding truth in the age of information fragmentation.Amis expands the connotation of parody to the realistic context of cultural practices,showing the dizziness and absurdity brought by the postmodern world through the reworking of the real world.The third chapter focuses on the operation mechanism of Amis’ s parody writing.The author practices parody in two aspects: metafictional narrative structure and comic expression effect.The author separates the reader from the young protagonist by setting up another layer of narrative in the creation of the novel,exposing the writer’s fictional intention with metafictional parody.The author also presents an exaggerated and absurd comic style in characterization and scene setting.The fourth chapter intends to show that Amis presents his apocalyptic imagination and primitive regressive thoughts about the future of mankind through parody,and constructs a seemingly real and fantastical literary world for readers from an outsider’s standpoint,while behind his jocular and humorous parody is his metaphorical expression of the essence of emptiness and absurdity in postmodern society.