Reconstruction Of History In Sexing The Cherry And The Daylight Gate—A Perspective Of Historiographic Metafiction

Jeanette Winterson is a brilliant contemporary British writer whose works use beautiful language,a unique writing style,and a wide range of themes,including love,gender,time,history,etc.Her works are created with rich and profound implications and postmodernist narrative features.By using Canadian postmodernist theorist Linda Hutcheon’s historiographic metafiction as a theoretical guide,this thesis takes Sexing the Cherry and The Daylight Gate as examples to analyze Winterson’s historical narrative,to explore how the grand narrative of history is deconstructed and the pluralistic histories are reconstructed thorough typical writing techniques of historiographic metafiction.In addition to the introduction and conclusion parts,the main body of this thesis includes three chapters.The introduction part mainly introduces Winterson’s life and literary achievements,literature review,and then briefly introduces Linda Hutcheon’s historiographic metafiction theory.Chapter One discusses that in these two novels,the orthodox grand historical narrative is deconstructed by using multiple small historical narratives and non-linear narrative,illustrating Winterson’s questioning of the unity,coherence,and authority of orthodox history.Chapter Two explores how the history of British women in the 17^th century is reshaped through the use of parodic intertextuality.First of all,in 17^th-century Britain,women,a marginal group,is ignored by the patriarchal society.However,in Winterson’s novels,the strong,brave,and independent image of women breaks through the suppression of male-dominated society and steps onto the stage of history.Secondly,women have diversified attitudes towards sexuality,subverting the situation of heterosexual hegemony.Chapter Three probes into the reconstruction of British history of religious politics in the 17^th century in the two novels.Revisiting history,the unknown religious history hidden under the control of mainstream ideology and hegemonic politics is revealed.Winterson makes a political criticism of the religion-dominated social environment of the 17^th century and attempts to redefine the meaning of some major historical events and re-imagine a free and stable social state that dares to resist religious oppression.Both Sexing the Cherry and The Daylight Gate are typical historiographic metafictions.By using the characteristics of historiographic metafiction,the grand historical narrative is deconstructed and the histories of British women and religious politics in the 17^th century are reconstructed,thus creating a discourse space for women and revealing another side of religious politics covered by mainstream ideology.In this way,the official history should be treated dialectically,and pluralistic histories would also be taken into serious consideration.