Violence Writing In Zadie Smith’s Novels

Zadie Smith,one of the most successful young British writers,displays a variety of themes and profound thoughts in humorous but serious style.She sets her novels in the multi-cultural post WWⅡBritain,and her protagonists,either immigrants from the former colonies or their descendents,have to undergo various kinds of visible and invisible violence in the Multi-culture.However,the attention to and research of her novels are far from enough,and few scholars,home and abroad,have ever showed interest in the violence writing in her novels.The paper endeavors to read and understand Zadie Smith’s novels from a violence writing perspective.Based on the Theory of Violence by Johan Galtung,it conducts a close reading of White Teeth,The Autograph Man,On Beauty and NW,with a focus on the description of violence.The violence writing perspective constitutes a complement to and promotion of the existing study of Zadie Smith,and at the same time offers some insights into the study of other novels.In addition,a violence writing perspective can help us to achieve a better understanding of the social,historical and cultural causes that contribute to the existence of violence,which is helpful for us to reflect on the dilemma people confront in modern society and cope better with diverse kinds of violence they encounter.This paper consists of five chapters.Chapter One summarizes the research status of Zadie Smith at home and abroad,and introduces the Theory of Violence and the significance of the topic,and the following three chapters(Chapter Two to Chapter Four)analyze the Direct Violence,Structural Violence and Cultural Violence in the four novels respectively,while Chapter Five concludes the social,historical and cultural causes and the relationships of the three types of violence.The violence originates from the institutionalization and legitimization of racism and the far-reaching impact of religious doctrines,and Cultural Violence,the root of Direct Violence and Structural Violence,also justifies the latter.