Building Another Southern

In the 1980's,the New Historicism came into being in England and United States as a new approach to literary criticism. This critical approach can also be regarded as an important part of"the poetics of culture", which stresses the re-construction of historical—cultural context. New Historicism concentrates on the textual attributes of history while arguing that history is not an objective being but a"historical narrative"or"historiography". From the viewpoint of New Historicism, there are no clear limits between literature and history, for they can reflect or even influence each other, which is known as intertextuality. By rereading literature, people can reconstruct and reshape history. Gone With the Wind was published in 1936. According to New Historicism, the author Margaret Mitchell relates the stories from the standpoint of the South of America. By glorifying the good qualities of the South and revealing the dark sides of the North, the author represented the history, and also by the negotiation between social text and literary text, a new historical text was created, thus reconstructing a new South and reshaping the history of the South. This thesis aims to analyze how Gone With the Wind --the literary text influences and reconstructs the historical text by using the theories of New Historicism.