Abstract


Desire Under the Elms is a famous drama by American dramatist Eugene O’Neill. In 1850s, America was prospering in material life while at the same time many people could not embrace a proper attitude towards material wealth, which was reflected in Desire Under the Elms. This paper adopts social and historical criticism to make a detailed analysis on the material desire and conflicts in Desire Under the Elms.
This paper is meaningful as it makes a detailed analysis on Desire Under the Elms. On the one hand, it analyzes the main characters in their social and historical background. The readers can have a new approach to the great work of Desire Under the Elms, and have a deeper understanding of it. On the other hand, the paper compares the social situation of America in 1850s with the present social situation in China, and gets inspirations, for Chinese and people from a lot of other countries are now living in a world in a way mirrors America in 1850s. This paper will lead Chinese readers and the readers from most part of world into thinking about how to balance material life and relationship between people.
This paper begins with the social background and the significance of the research. Then it follows the theory of social and historical criticism. After introducing the theory of social and historical criticism, the paper gets to know the social background of the drama, introduce the background of the author O’Neill and its embodiment in the drama, and give a detailed analysis on the main characters in this drama under this approach. From the perspective of social and historical criticism, this paper hopes to be realistic and significant by enabling Chinese people and people of a lot of other countries to get inspirations and better comprehension of Desire Under the Elms.    

Keywords: Desire Under the Elms, social and historical criticism, material desire

摘要

《榆树下的欲望》是美国剧作家尤金•奥尼尔的一部著名戏剧。19世纪50年代的美国，繁荣的物质生活之下是人们被物欲冲昏了头脑。本文将借助社会历史批判方法对《榆树下的欲望》中的物欲的冲突展开研究。
 本文认为通过研究19世纪50年代的优秀作品能很好地了解那个时代人们的物欲，并且对当时社会历史背景下的戏剧主要人物进行更好的研究分析。当今时代， 中国和许多其他国家在一定程度上和那时的美国社会有许多相似之处。本文将会引发读者们思考如何平衡物欲与人际关系的问题。
本文首先介绍19世纪50年代的美国和当今中国的社会现状，随之引出本次研究的目的和意义。在介绍社会历史批评方法的理论及其判定标准之后，本文先对戏剧作者奥尼尔本人进行了解，而后对《榆树下的欲望》的主要人物的经历和生活方式进行详细和深入的分析。在社会历史批判方法之下，本文希望中国以及其他国家的读者能更正确地对待物欲，以达到论文的现实意义。

关键词： 《榆树下的欲望》；社会历史批评方法；物欲