The City·Sex·Violence·Art

Henry Miller was an important as well as controversial writer in the 20^th century American literary world. Based on the text analysis of three of Henry Miller's novels—Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring and Tropic of Capricorn, this thesis intends to analyze the four characteristics in the midst of these novels—"sex", "the city", "violent fantasy" and "artistic ideal".Under Miller's pen, the urban is a huge sewage pool, where urban citizens are all soul drifters, and beneath the dirtiness, shadowiness and darkness of the urban, the rush full of the undercurrent passion of life and the desire and vitality of modern people is deeply hidden in the first place. Then the naked sexual love in the novels are the fluxion of human's primitive life instincts, and sex is a wave in the undercurrent of life, through which the status and function of sex as great comforting force and a rebellious outlet . And then violent fantasy is the presentation of the masculine power of "libido" and the impulses of life force, on which Miller constructs his own idealistic spiritual world of Utopian and finds a new path to reconstruct a spiritual world. Finally, the adoration to life force and the discussion to multitudinous arts are revealed in Miller's grubby writing, emanating artistic aroma. Of course, there exists paradox in Miller's road of exploration; however, it is just though the probe into these paradoxes that human being can advance continually.As seen from above, based on the description of these life impulses—sex and violent fantasy under the darkness of the urban, the belief in the power of life manifested in Miller's novels is proceeding the quest of rescuing human's mental world, making his rebellion filled with modernity.