The Literary Value In Winston Churchill’s The Gathering Storm

Winston Churchill(1874-1965)was one of Britain’s famous men of state,writers and public speakers in the 20th century.He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values".Because of their primarily historical topics and content,Churchill’s works have yet to receive much attention from a literary perspective.The Nobel Prize in Literature,however,definitively confirmed the literary value of his works.As documentaries and movies about Churchill continue to be popular with modern audiences,Churchill’s works start to attract attention again.The Gathering Storm,the first volume of The Second World War Memoir,records the historical events and re-interprets stories of famous historical figures after the First World War.By employing the Marxist criticism,in particularly Terry Eagleton’s argument on literary value,the thesis writer aims to explore the literary value of The Gathering Storm,According to Eagleton,the literary value of a text is decided by three determinants:"the ideological environs" in the text,"the self-production of the text",and "the ’exchange-value’ between readers and the text." The present study,therefore,applies the literary value together with the ideological theory,to examine the construction of ideological environs in The Gathering Storm,the self-production of the text and the realization of "the exchange-value" between readers and the text;this also further deliberates the relation between the literary text and its ideology,as well as the relation between the literary text and history.This thesis begins by an examination of the ideological environs of The Gathering Storm,leading to the argument that the general ideology of Europe,longing for peace,after WWI is revealed in the text.Furthermore,Churchill’s authorial ideology,especially his proclamations of his contemporaries,surfaces in the text.Then the thesis contends that the value of self-production of The Gathering Storm explains the relationship between the text and ideology,as well as the relationship between the text and history.Eagleton believes that the object and dominant force of the text are ideological rather than historic,which forms the "double absence" of history in the text.Therefore,the present study puts forwards the idea that,in constructing the literary value of The Gathering Storm,it is the ideology behind the "appeasement policy" after the war,German rearmament and other historical events that completes the selfproduction of the book.Thirdly,the literary value is achieved by "the exchange-value"between readers and the text.Readers,as recipients,are led to see only what the text allows them to see,and at the same time,because of the "fictiveness" of a literary text,readers recognize the biased portrayals in the text;this way of narration provokes audience to form a judgment on the themes or values of the text,thereby cooperating with the text to achieve its aesthetic value.The concluding part emphasizes that it is the writing of the ideological environs in The Gathering Storm that primarily constructs the literary value of the text.The construction of the ideological environs connects with the realization of the "exchangevalue "between readers and the text;this makes it possible to construct the aesthetic value which provides a relatively full interpretation of the literary value.