Grotesque And Social Resistance:the Body Politics Of Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things

Alasdair Gray’s novel Poor Things is considered as a great success since the publication of his masterpiece. Like Gray’s other novels, literary critics focus on the questions of identity, duality, femininity, post-modernism and so on. Almost all previous researches centre on the female protagonist Victoria/Bella. Based on the previous study and Bakhtin’s Theory of the Body, this thesis introduces the male grotesque body Godwin and gives a more comprehensive and convincing interpretation on both female and male bodies and their inherent relationship so as to reveal the significance of social resistance the grotesque bodies signify.The thesis consists of three parts:introduction, body part and conclusion. The introduction part includes two sections:the first section includes the background knowledge of the author Alasdair Gray, his literary responses to Scottish identity and a very brief introduction of Poor Things; The second section reviews the previous study on Poor Things at home and abroad. The second part is the main body of this thesis, comprised of three chapters. The first chapter is the theoretical framework. It explains Bakhtin’s socially subversive power of carnival, mainly the function of laughter and the grotesque body image. The second chapter makes a comprehensive analysis of the grotesque bodies, Godwin and Bella, in diverse aspects. Godwin’s grotesque characteristics are explicit and external while Bella’s are implicit and internal. They both function as the subversive power against the society although the effects they produce are different. In chapter three, the discussion on the social significance of the grotesque bodies is further and deeper. The last part is the conclusion of the whole thesis. It emphasizes the theme of the thesis and pays more attention to the significance of the social resistance the grotesque bodies bring and the author’s intention.