| Charles Dickens(1812-1870)is a well-known Victorian writer who pays heed to social reality and reveals social ills.As one of his most mature works,Great Expectations vividly depicts Victorians’ passion for gentlemen and their pursuit of such status.Once it is published in the weekly periodical All the Year Round,it attracts widespread attention from the field of literary criticism.Recent interpretations of Great Expectations have generally centered on narrative techniques,the theme of Bildungsroman,identity explorations,feminism,and post-colonialism.In Great Expectations,Dickens narrates the ups and downs of Pip’s growth journey from naivety to vanity,and finally to maturity.This story,which is built on Pip as well as the people around him,is fictional,yet not entirely subjective or detached from historical reality.As a master of critical realism,the history portrayed by Dickens in his novel is not a history that sticks to the grand narrative,but a history of common people.Through the discussion of Victorian gentlemen,Dickens realistically reproduces the panorama of Victorian English society with his unique artistic technique.This goes hand in hand with New Historicism’s insistence on the interplay of history and text.This thesis applies New Historicism,especially the historicity of texts and the textuality of history proposed by Louis Montrose,to interpret Dickens’ s relocation of the concept of the gentleman in Great Expectations.On one hand,from the perspective of the historicity of texts,the concept of the gentleman in Great Expectations is a product of Victorian history and culture.To better apprehend the text,this thesis places it in its historical context and examines the evolution of the concept of the gentleman and Dickens’ s gentleman complex,including its causes and specific manifestations.On the other hand,from the perspective of the textuality of history,this thesis aims to interpret Dickens’ s relocation of the concept of the gentleman through a close reading of the novel,clarifying that gentlemen are not born but socially constructed: The Victorian concept of the gentleman is constantly dismantled and relocated in Great Expectations,thus breaking the traditional shackles of blood and wealth over and over again,and ultimately presenting a moral turn in the dimensions of professional ethics,family virtues and Christian benevolence.This thesis is composed of four chapters besides the introduction and the conclusion parts.Chapter One is devoted to a literature review of Great Expectations both at home and abroad,elaborating on the fruits and deficiencies of the previous studies on this novel and drawing forth the innovation of this thesis.Then comes the theoretical foundation including the development of New Historicism with emphasis on its major concerns on the textuality of history and the historicity of texts in Chapter Two.Chapter Three expounds on Great Expectations from the perspective of the historicity of texts,which peers into Dickens’ s intention to relocate the concept of the gentleman by tracing its evolution through the ages,especially during the Victorian period in which Dickens lives.The following chapter involves an in-depth interpretation of Great Expectations from the perspective of the textuality of history,which indicates Dickens’ s determination to give a voice to the emerging middle class by relocating the concept of the gentleman to a morality-oriented one.Dickens’ s relocation of the concept of the gentleman in Great Expectations reveals the growing discourse power of the middle class,which echoes the needs of the Victorian middle class by developing and defending channels of upward mobility for themselves.In other words,Dickens turns the gentleman from a sealed and closed concept to an open and inclusive one by the reaffirmation of the importance of morality in Great Expectations,which not only serves to maintain the stability of Victorian society,but also provides inspiration for social harmony and moral education in the present day. |
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