A Study Of Charles Dickens’ Construction Of The American Image In American Notes

At the invitation of Washington Irving,Charles Dickens visited America in 1842,which deeply affected his writing thoughts.After returning home,he composed American Notes,which was the first work of the transitional period of his writing career.Nevertheless,scholars prefer Dickens’ fictional works to his nonfictional ones.In consideration of the inadequacy of previous studies on it and the obvious image construction involved in it,this thesis studies the travelogue from the perspective of Imagologie.This thesis consists of three parts.The first part is the introduction.The second part is the main body.Firstly,this thesis analyses the multidimensional images from four aspects: politics,economy,culture and scenery.On the whole,the American image constructed by Dickens contains the characteristics of utopia and ideology,most of it being negative,which indicates that although Dickens visited America with great expectations,he did not blindly extol it.Instead,he maintained his own judgment.Secondly,this thesis explores the construction techniques,including contrast and comparison,multi-angle depiction,and the fusion of narration and comments.Thirdly,this thesis studies the objective and subjective factors that affect the construction of the American image.By analyzing the context in Britain and America,this thesis reveals the rationality of the American image constructed by Dickens.The writer’s personalized feeling and intentional selection also contribute to the construction of exotic images.In addition,while constructing exotic images,writers also experience self-examination and introspection.Dickens found out that America just like Britain had numerous social problems and both were in urgent need of reform.The third part is the conclusion: the exotic image is not a replica of reality and is constructed with the needs of the writer,but in particular history,it is unlikely for Dickens to construct America in discretionary way.Social collective imagination is constructive existence,which varies with the change of time and environment.Furthermore,the pace of the change of social collective imagination in homologous and heterogeneous cultures is different.In homologous cultures,social collective imagination is less impacted by cultural misreading and thus exists longer.Britain and America belong to the homologous culture.In this way,the America image constructed by Dickens in American Notes is relatively authentic,which is of great referential value for us to understand America in the first half of the nineteenth century.