A Study On �Marginal Persons� In The Emigrants

Charlotte Smith,a prolific poet and novelist in the 18 th century,is regarded as a forerunner of British Romanticism because of her contribution in reviving sonnets and pushing forward the upsurge of Gothic novel creation.As critics' beloved writer,her novels are frequently reviewed.However,her poetry wants admirers especially her long poem The Emigrants,which perfectly presents her talent for mastering artistic skills,her creation thoughts and political envisions.Although some critics concern about the theme of Smith's self-portraits in the poem,they rarely pay attention to the images of marginal persons in the poem.Based on the research status,the thesis attempts to analyze the images of the poem's marginal persons,their marginality representations and redemption directions,by using Marginal Man Theory and close reading,to explore Smith's meditations on the fate of marginal persons in Britain after the French Revolution.Specifically,The Emigrants involves two types of marginal persons: French emigrants and speaker �I�.The thesis first analyzes the marginality representations and redemption directions of French emigrants.After the French Revolution,a great number of French aristocrats and clergies exile to Britain,and turn into marginal persons in cultural crevices.Manifestly,they have to bear oppression both from Britain and France.Implicitly,they have strong national consciousness,and are sensitive and melancholy.In order to overcome the marginal situations,French emigrants try to get their poise through immersing in previous memories or return to France to achieve redemption.Similar with the French emigrants,speaker �I� is also stuck in marginal situations.Hence the thesis analyzes the complicated identities of speaker �I� to explore its marginality representations and redemption directions.Sometimes,the speaker is the younger son,while the other times,it is a female bearing domestic violence.No matter who he or she is,he/she is stuck in the patriarchal oppressive state at the end of the turbulent 18 th century,bitterly suffering the taste of loneliness and melancholy.Although they are marginal persons outside British dominant group and hope to return to nature to avoid theoppression from patriarchal society,they also long to appeal to reform and cosmopolitanism,so as to solve their marginal situations and achieve redemption.In conclusion,this thesis,by analyzing marginal persons' marginality representations and redemption directions in the light of Marginal Man Theory,attempts to explore Smith's mediations on British marginal persons' fate after the French Revolution.The research results indicate that,by the sentimental writing of marginal persons' marginal state,The Emigrants vividly reveals Smith's strong dissatisfaction with patriarchal society,and properly interprets her appeal for social reform and her political envision of cosmopolitanism.Consequently,the thesis expects to offer a new perspective of interpreting The Emigrants and Smith's other works,and an effective case study of the political envision of cosmopolitanism which is an important theme of British Romantic literature.