A New Historicist Approach To Gulliver’s Travels

Gulliver’s Travels has attracted the attention of numerous critics and scholars both at home and abroad since it was published.Previous studies are done mainly from such perspectives as satirical art,political allegory,narrative strategies,defamiliarization effect,aesthetic idea,carnival features,educational thought and thealienation of characters in the work,while the thesis delves into the novel from the perspective of New Historicism.Gulliver’s Travels shows the juxtaposition of history and fiction by turning the grand narrative into discontinuous and fragmented histories,which is seldom studied by scholars up till now.New Historicism challenges the boundary between literature and history,and breaks the traditional binary mode between the two.Swift’s unique way of dealing with history in fiction and the relationship between history and fiction coincides with the core of New Historicism,which inspires this thesis as an attempt to do research on “the historicity of texts and the textuality of history” in Gulliver’s Travels so as to better display the social role of literature.Based on Stephen Greenblatt’s and Louis Montrose’s new historicist views,the present thesis focuses on the political strife,official selection system,science and pseudo-science,colonialism and anti-colonialism,wars and morality of the eighteenth-century British society as presented in Gulliver’s Travels to reconstruct historical,social,cultural discourse background in Swift’s age.First and foremost,literature review expounds the present research status of Gulliver’s Travels and throws light on the significance of interpreting the work by New Historicism.Secondly,the thesis introduces the theoretical framework of New Historicism including its rise and development,with emphasis on the relationships between literature and history as well as history and text.The following part probes into the historicity of text by Swift’s age,especially the historical events to unscramble the historical background of the novel.Then,it emphatically applies the textuality of history to represent history,illustrating that the integrated history can be preserved and passed down by text.Last but not the least,the conclusion reiterates not all history is fact but a narration manipulated under various powers and ideologies.The thesis explores the interaction of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels with the social and political status in his age through a retrospect of critical historical events,so as to illustrate that the author,the politics,the society,the culture and history of that time co-produce this novel,erasing the binary line between history and literary works.Moreover,it hopes to disclose that there is no absolute truth in history,as history is a kind of narration too.By interpreting the interaction between textual representation and its historical context,the thesis also expands research perspectives on this novel.