A Study On The Postmodernity Of John Updike’s Novels

John Updike(1932-2009)was an influential writer in 20 th century American literature,as well as a poet,playwright,and critic.His works have won almost all the important awards for literature in the United States,and he is oneof the most popular candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature in the United States.This paper selects Updike’s Scarlet Letter Trilogy,Gertrude and Claudiu,Memories of the Ford Administrations and other mid-to-late period novels,and analyzes the postmodernity in Updike’s novel creation,combining some postmodern theories and Updike’s personal creative ideas.By discussing the postmodern qualities of Updike’s novels,we can restore the multifaceted,three-dimensional and complex nature of Updike as a classical writer.This thesis consists of three parts: introduction,text and conclusion.The introduction mainly introduces the background and significance of the topic,briefly explains the research methods and innovations of this paper.In addition,combs research status at home and abroad of postmodernity in updike’s novel,to expound the value of this choice.The main body consists of four chapters:The first chapter is divided into two parts.The first part mainly combs Updike’s life and creation,and snoops out the correlation between Updike and postmodernism.The second part elaborates the theories about postmodernity,andcombins the theoretical viewpoints of some postmodern scholars to defines the postmodernity in Updike’s novels.The second chapter discusses the diversified postmodern artistic techniques in Updike’s novel creation from the aspects of text form,which can be divided into the intertextuality of deliberate parody and metafiction narrative.First ofall,combining with the intertextual theory,this paper expounds how Updike subverts and deconstructs the traditional text and culture,and analyzes how Updike reconstructs the ideological connotation of the text with the current secularization and anti-traditional spirit of present.Secondly,in order to define the uncertainty in Updike’s novels,this paper analyzes the challenges to the traditional dual versus vertical narrative model,the blurring of the boundary between fiction and reality,and the reader’s participation in the text game with the metafiction narrative theory.The third chapter analyzes Updike’s active participation in postmodern discourse from the content of the text.Starting from Updike’s deconstruction of the grand narrative discourse,it analyzes Updike’s unique discourse strategies in his novel creation from the perspective of postmodern discourse such as gender 、 race and conception of history.This reflects the postmodern expression in the content of Updike’s novels and his unique thinking of postmodern discourse.The fourth chapter explores the aesthetic turn of Updike’s postmodern creation,analyzes Updike’s reaction to postmodernism and the fusion of postmodernism and realism in his novel creation.By analyzing the blend of fiction and reality,inheritance and departure from tradition and reflections on postmodern humanistic care in the novel,this paper shows how Updike expands the dimension of postmodernism and the possibility of "realism" beyond traditional realism in the postmodern context,and demonstrates the new tendency of contemporary American novel creation.In the conclusion part,the main contents of the thesis are further summarized and summarized,indicating once again that the post-modernity and realism in Updike’s novels coexist.The definition of Updike’s works in the past is sobiased that we should have a more diversified view of this classic writer.