Traces Of History,Pursuit Of Truth:Historiographic Metafiction In Kurt Vonnegut’s Jailbird

Kurt Vonnegut is considered as a major voice among the important postmodern novelists in American contemporary literature. He has been lauded as one of America’s most respected novelists due to his active artistic interaction with American life. Jailbird, as a representative work of Vonnegut, it is regarded as his best book in the 1970s. This novel combines humor and pain, fantasies and history events, depicting a contemporary caricatures for American society. This thesis, then, will examine Vonnegut’s technique and appraise a writer with one foot anchored firmly in the past while the other touches our own times and beyond.This article aims to analyze Vonnegut’s Jailbird, a historiagraphic metafiction, from three aspects. Combining the historical events in the story, this thesis tries to find out the truth behind the text, which reflects author’s irony to the unescapable present situation, deep concern to the reality and his call for humanistic care.The first part of this thesis provides a brief description of Kurt Vonnegut and Jailbird, explains the Dresden Massacre he experienced and his history complex. Besides, this part also summarizes the literature review of Jailbird by previous scholars home and abroad.The second part includes three body chapters:The first chapter is about the analysis of the nonlinear narrative in order to disclose the paradoxical directions of history, progressive, regressive and circular. Thus, it deconstructs the teleology of Grand history. The second chapter in this part focuses on the analysis of meta-history and marco-narrative. It examines the methods such as pastiche of genres, multiple perspectives and voices as well as fragmented plots, which thus dismantle the coherence and unity of history. The History becomes various histories. The third chapter concludes that through the use of intertextuality, Vonnegut successfully conveys that though reality is nihilistic, the ultimate truth is empty and meaningless; whereas, human beings crave for meanings and are intrinsically story-telling animals. Therefore men construct history and stones to confront the emptiness of reality. Intertextuality plays a key role in making Jailbird a historiography metafiction.The last part is the conclusion. This thesis, through the analysis of three main aspects, reveals that by using "clutter" narrative forms, Vonnegut offers readers a picture of industrial civilization and high development of science and technology. It also shows Vonnegut’s optimistic attitude towards the misery in real life and the unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. In addition, his calling for humanistic spirit never stops.