An Analysis Of The Motif Of American Modernist Narrative Literature In The 20th Century

Quest’s voice rings throughout all stages of human civilization, and Quest’s melody runs through the whole process of literary development. So the motif of quest which began in ancient mythology appears again and again in writers’ text.A theme of American literature in the 20 th century is the evolutionary alternation of heavy loss and persistent quests. The quest can be said to be the inner deep feelings of American literature. With the rose of modernism and American modernist narrative literature s further development, The connotation and form of quest motif as well as the main body and environment of quest had changed.In this paper, I take representative writers’ classic works as an example, I discuss it in the perspective of thematics,on the basis of close reading, and social and historical analysis together with narrative theory and theory of archetypal criticism, to explore the modernist narrative literature of the quest motif.Trying to explore the connotation and the seeker of quest motif, this article also tries to analyze the tragedy of quest motif aesthetically. Also, I hope this paper can make positive exploration on the cultural implication of the American modernism narrative literature in the 20 th century. Individually or integrally, the above is for figuring out the deep thought and humanistic care.This paper consists of introduction body and epilogue. The introduction aims to define the concept and scope of American modernist narrative literature in the 20 th century and introduce the research status of American modernist narrative literature together with the representative writers in the field of motif. The body part is made up of three chapters. The first chapter mainly discusses the connotation of the quest motif of American modernist narrative literature in the 20 th century, including the survival ways of pursuing in reality as surface meaning as well as philosophic and poetic of the pursuit as deeper meaning. The second chapter aims to explore the seekers’ image on two aspects,that’s the characteristic quality of the seeker and their inner states and means of quest. The third chapter mainly analyzes American modernist narrative literature in the 20 th century as the tragedy aesthetically. The conclusion part repeats the arguments and the idea of the text, pointing out the thought connotation and humanistic care of American modernist narrative literature in the 20 th century.