The Historical Writing In Pat Barker’s The Regeneration Trilogy

Pat Barker(1943-)is one of the contemporary British women writers,her masterpiece,The Regeneration Trilogy(1996)represents the soldier’s and colony’s life in WWI and the situation of wartime hospital and society by writing about Rivers,Sassoon and headhunters’ life.This thesis draws on the New Historicism theories of Louis Adrian Montrose and Stephen Greenblatt to analyze the historical writing in The Regeneration Trilogy.From the perspectives of “historicity of texts”,“textuality of history” and “subversion and containment”,this thesis analyzes the marginal historical places and marginal historical figures in the novel,exploring the historical realities in the novel and the subversive spirits of marginal people in the novel.The thesis aims to reveal Barker’s great concern for historical writing and her deep concern for marginal people.The main body of the thesis is divided into three parts.Firstly,the thesis focuses on the marginal historical places in The Regeneration Trilogy,mainly through analyzing the traumatic and prejudiced Craiglockhart hospital on the home front of WWI and the colony,Melanesia,showing the historical writing of the home front and the historical writing of colony in the novel.By avoiding the front line battlefield of WWI and turning to the Craiglockhart and colony’s living conditions,Barker highlights her preoccupation with the margins among the flood of grand history.Secondly,the thesis analyzes the marginal tribe headhunters and the marginal individuals Sassoon and Beattie in the novel to explore the anti-war and colonial history in Barker’s writing.Under the influence of marginal places,the lives of the headhunters and Sassoon and Beattie are always under surveillance,interference and control by the mainstream authority.Sassoon,an anti-war soldier,is sent to hospital for his anti-war declaration.Beattie,an anti-war pacifist,is framed and imprisoned for her anti-war activities.The headhunters are investigated and intervened by the colonizer.Finally,the thesis devotes to analyzing the marginal figures’ acts of rebellion against mainstream authority in the novel,exploring the subversive spirit of the marginal figures.Under the oppression of mainstream authority,as the headhunters and Sassoon and Beattie become increasingly marginalized,they gradually realize the importance of pursuing their individual identities and realizing their self-worth.So they decide to subvert the containment of authority by searching for their own individual identities and value,rejecting the cultural interventions of the colonizers.The headhunters,Sassoon and Beattie’s acts of resistance reflect the awakening of the marginal people’s intention of seeking individual value and their subversive spirit.By analyzing the historical marginal places,historical marginal figures and subversive spirit of marginal people in The Regeneration Trilogy,this thesis shows Barker’s home front and colony are full of oppression and containment,demonstrating Barker’s historical writing of marginal figures in the war,exploring the subversive spirits of marginal people who pursue self-identity and resist colonialism,and criticizing the suppression of marginal people by mainstream authority,believing the marginal people should shape their own history and break their marginal status through subversion and resistance.