《五号屠场》新历史主义分析_英语论文

An Analysis of Slaughterhouse-Five from the Perspective of New Historicism

摘要

冯内古特是美国当代文学史上最重要的后现代主义作家之一。他的第六部作品《五号屠场》，是最具代表性的黑色幽默和反战小说，也给他在海内外带来了超高的声誉。

本文主张用新历史主义这一理论去讨论《五号屠场》这本小说。之前有一些对《五号屠场》的研究，只是从它的特殊手法着手，认为《五号屠场》只是一本科幻小说。这样狭隘的看法不能完全的解答出冯内古特撰写这本小说的真实目的。而从新历史主义出发去看《五号屠场》，会将这本小说放在当时的背景下，去深层次探讨作者的写作目的以及他想告诉读者什么样的信息。

本论文将分为四个部分，第一部分是介绍《五号屠场》这本书、作者和新历史主义。第二部分分析作者如何将自身生活背景及其他书中的文本插入本书，体现了新历史主义的重要特征之一：文本的历史性。第三部分是解释分析作者在本书中展现战争的方式，体现出新历史主义的另一个特征：历史的文本性。最后一部分是分析《五号屠场》这本小说对当时和现代的影响。最后本文得出结论，作者通过本书想展现的是战争的残酷性和虚伪性。

关键词：《五号屠场》；新历史主义；冯内古特；文本的历史性；历史的文本性

Abstract

Kurt Vonnegut was one of the greatest writers of postmodernism literature. Slaughterhouse-Five, his sixth novel, brought him immediate fame at home and abroad and was regarded as one of the most representative works of anti-war novels. 

This paper uses the theory of New Historicism to analyse Slaughterhouse-Five. Previous studies on this novel mainly focused on the writer’s special narrative techniques and some even defined this novel as science fiction. Such analyses failed to answer the question why Vonnegut wrote this novel. An analysis of Slaughterhouse-Five from the perspective of New Historicism will analyse this novel in its special background to find the reason why the writer wrote it and what he really intended to tell the readers through it.

This paper is divided into four parts. The first part introduces the author, this novel and the theory of New Historicism. The second part discusses how the author used his own life experiences and fragments from other books in this novel and thus making it a kind of “historical text”. The third part explains how the author presented war in this novel and made his narration “textualized history”. The last part analyses the influence of this novel to the society when it was published and also to the modern world. Finally this paper concludes that through this book, the author wished to expose the cruelty and hypocrisy of war. 

Key words : Slaughterhouse-Five; New Historicism; Kurt Vonnegut; historical text; textualized history