Construction, Appropriation, And Aestheticization

William Styron (1925-2006) is an influential writer in contemporary America, who wrote most of his works from the1950s through the1970s. Among his fictional works, Lie Down in Darkness, The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie’s Choice represent his major contributions to literature, winning him such major literary awards as the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. However, Styron is also a controversial writer. Both The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie’s Choice have caused heated controversies.Styron was born in "Virginia, a Southern state, and obtained from the particular history of the South a strong sense of history which enabled him to look at the slavery in the American South, disastrous historical events, and social problems of contemporary American society from a unique perspective. An important tendency in Styron’s literary practices during the decades was that he always attempted to inquire into history through various complicated relations, particularly power relations, in order to gain some permanence for his work. By interweaving individuals’ experience with the catastrophic moments of nuclear warfare, slave revolt and state-organized genocide, Styron endeavored to claim his power as a novelist by directly negotiating with history. This tendency is embodied in not only The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie’s Choice, both of which have historical figures and events as their subject matters, but also Lie Down in Darkness, which is a depiction of individual tragedy.Over the decades, there has been a persistence of controversies over Styron’s novels, focusing on his use of history. While some critics have accused Styron of distorting certain historical facts to suit his own purposes, other critics have categorized his later novels as the historical novel in order to release him from the duty of being truthful to history. Both sides have deliberately done so for their own purposes. These critical tendencies have proved to be insufficient for understanding the complexity of Styron’s works. The problem that Styron critics must face is how to reconsider history and its representation in his works in terms of the interrelationship between literature and history.Based on existing Styron scholarship, this dissertation is a study of Styron with a specific focus on his three major novels:Lie Down in Darkness, The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie’s Choice. In order to have a better understanding of history and its representation, this study both borrows from Michel Foucault’s theory of power-knowledge relationship for a useful perspective of history, and applies the new historicist theories and methods to the interpretation of Styron’s works so as to demonstrate the relationship between Styron’s literary practices and their sociohistorical contexts.Chapter One locates Lie Down in Darkness in the sociohistorical context of postwar America to explore the dynamics between the two. As a writer with Southern background, Styron is deeply influenced by Southern literary tradition, but he refuses to accept the title of the heir of that tradition. Even in his first novel, he already demonstrates his distinctness and originality in fundamental themes and concerns. The novel juxtaposes the power relations within a Southern family with important historical events and demonstrates a specific way of understanding history. In this way, it transcends the depiction of individual tragic experience and functions as a vehicle for the representation of history. Although cultural and political issues are not directly addressed in the novel, the tragedy of the Loftis family as presented in the novel symbolizes the profound influence of the nuclear anxiety on postwar American society. The individuals’ stories within the novel can be understood as little narratives, which constitute modern American history while interpreting that history. As Styron’s first novel, Lie Down in Darkness both marks his artistic maturity and displays his particular sense of history. Therefore, the novel can be read as Styron’s unconscious participation in the construction of contemporary American history.Chapter Two examines the production and reception of The Confessions of Nat Turner in the context of the surging Black Power during the1960s. Based on real historical figures and events, this novel is treated as a cultural site, where the distinction between historical facts and imaginary fiction collapses, and where controversies rise over whether Styron distorts history or not. In this novel, Styron’s sociohistorical concern is obviously directed at Black Power, but instead of addressing the present, he turns to the past for revelation. He both integrates Gray’s historical discourse into his literary discourse and makes Gray a character in his fictional world. Telling the story through Nat Turner demonstrates Styron’s confidence in his priority while reinforcing the persuasiveness of the narrative. Turner’s status as a prisoner and his final penalty signifies the efficiency of discipline and punish. The fictionalization of historical figures and events in this novel offers an example of consciously appropriating history for immediate politics. Although The Confessions of Nat Turner is a novel with strong political implications, its value cannot be judged merely by those meanings. Styron’s exploration of the complexity of humanity in his creation of the Nat Turner image is both an imaginary interpretation and a resource of the permanent power of the novel.Chapter Three reads Sophie’s Choice as a cultural representation of the Holocaust. Produced when the Holocaust was experiencing a boom in American popular culture, the novel relates the story about Sophie’s experience in Auschwitz. But instead of trying to offer a testimony to the tragedy, Styron creates a "non-representational representation" of that history. Sophie’s image is characterized with contradictions and dilemmas; her complicated sufferings and hard choices challenge the limits of human experience. But the novel adopts a strategy of filtering her stories and distances the narrative from the center of the tragedy. This method can be interpreted as Styron’s control of the past through knowing it, and his purpose is to integrate the knowledge about the past into the system of social control and reproduction. Sophie’s Choice represents the Holocaust in its particular way and contributes to the commodification of the Holocaust discourse in American consumer society. Styron’s choice of the subject does coincide with the popular culture and has economic purposes, but he is clearly conscious of its aesthetic potential and demonstrates in the work his serious artistic and political concerns. Its significance lies in that the novel both domesticates the knowledge about the Holocaust and deliberately aestheticizes that history.In brief, through an examination of his major novels and the sociohistorical contexts in which they were produced and received, this dissertation traces Styron’s development in his literary practices from the1950s through the1970s. As a writer actively participating in history when American society and culture undergo tremendous changes, Styron is always confronted with the contradiction between artistic concerns and sociohistorical concerns. Whether his engagement with history is characterized by his unconscious construction, conscious appropriation or deliberate aestheticization of history, Styron never fails to demonstrate his consideration of artistic achievement. Therefore, Styron’s power as a writer lies in the fact that he manages to reinforce the power of literature in history while representing history in literature.The originality of this dissertation is embodied in the following aspects:Firstly, it reconsiders the relationship between Styron and the Southern literary tradition and argues that Styron, while imitating the Southern tradition as represented by William Faulkner, makes efforts to transcend that tradition by enlarging the scope of his themes. Secondly, by extensively applying contemporary literary theories to the interpretation of Styron’s novels, this dissertation redefines the relationship between Styron’s literary practices and their sociohistorical contexts and considers the relationship as an interactive one, demonstrated in his echoes to contemporary politics and culture as well as his influence upon contemporary political and cultural life. Finally, based on a close reading of all kinds of texts, this dissertation summarizes Styron’s thirty-year literary practices as a developing process of unconsciously constructing, consciously appropriating and deliberately aestheticizing history. All the three findings are important for their transcendence of the existing Styron scholarship.