A Bridge Towards Modern English Literature

It is unanimously agreed that the Elizabethan age is the age of poetry and drama. Simultaneously, it has also witnessed the emergence and flourish of a new form of literature—the novel. Unfortunately, the Elizabethan novels have been either ignored or treated contemptuously by the critic. Among the Elizabethan novelists, Thomas Deloney has attracted even less serious literary criticism and there is scarcely any comprehensive study on his novels. This thesis, based on a close study of Deloney's novels, is intended to explore the characteristics of Deloney's novels from both art and content and to analyze the reasons for his uniqueness from a social economic perspective. Through a careful reading of Deloney's works, it is not difficult to find out that Deloney's novels, though despised and overlooked, are an important bridge across medieval and modern English literature.Deloney is a daring experimenter in writing techniques. Firstly, he chooses and sticks to prose as the medium of his expression, which stimulates the spread of the newly emerged form—the novel. Secondly, he divides his novels into chapters and attaches topic sentences to each chapter. Thirdly, his diction is remarkable. He brings dialect and foreign accent into his works, and his wording is varied and exact. Fourthly, in characterization, he gives his characters much freedom to reveal themselves through their words and deeds as well as their interrelationships with others. Finally, his way of displaying the inner minds of his characters is similar to stream of consciousness, which is a rare practice among his contemporary novels. Besides experimenting with new writing techniques, he swallows what appeals to him both in medieval and contemporary literature and owes his variety and vigor in style and language to drama, verse, jestbook and Euphuism.Deloney possesses the sensitivity of a talented writer and his works are theminiature of the whole Elizabethan society. He spares no efforts in eulogizing the newly rising class—the bourgeois class—and chooses them as protagonists for the first time in English literature. In his works, Deloney displays the lively group portraits of merchants and craftsmen as well as their individual pictures concerning their ways to fortune, their love stories, their marriages and all the trivialities in daily life. He grasps the key characteristics of the transitional phase when the feudal society gradually gives way to the bourgeois society and records this special historic phase in the form of novel. The vivid and lifelike bourgeoisie he delineates have shed some light on the great writers such as Daniel Defoe and Charles Dickens. Furthermore, Thomas Deloney in his novels discards the pastoral tradition and focuses on city life in his description. While highlighting the middle class, Deloney does not neglect the noble. The medieval ideas are still very obvious in his works. Traditional jests are crammed into the story for entertainment. Appropriate use of romance appeals to the sentimental and nostalgic upper-class readers. In addition, loyalty to the court is practiced as an accepted rule for the newly rich and the world in his novels is still a man-centered one.Though he is immature as a novelist, Deloney's resolute and worthy experiments in literary artistry have paved way for modem English literature starting from Daniel Defoe. His remarkable blending of inheritance and innovation in the content of the novel together with his successful fusion of the traditional and modem writing techniques proves essential to the development of English literature; and as a transitional writer, Thomas Deloney has built a bridge towards modem English literature.