英语本科毕业论文-Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn Journey of Initiation.doc
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1、 第 13页Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn: Journey of InitiationI. Initiation Stories and Mark Twains Two Adventures1.1 Initiation StoriesThe word “initiation” originated from anthropology. It refers to, after a series of hardships and ordeals, the adolescent obtaining the knowledge, ability and confide
2、nce to face the society and the life independently, and therefore entering a new stage of lifeadulthood. These hardships and ordeals are often some kinds of ceremonies. Especially in primitive tribes, when boys come to certain age, they must experience some ordeals on their bodies in order to be acc
3、epted as adults by their society, such as cutting some part of their bodies, catching and killing animals, and completing a task which usually only an adult can.In the history of English literature, so far the name of “initiation story” has not been established. That is not because its amount is so
4、small that it cannot become an independent subgenre of fiction, but, quite contrarily because there are large amounts of initiation stories, with different perspectives, then it is hard to express its broad literary vision and aesthetic scope with just a concise word. In addition, English critics ha
5、ve not made a profound study on it so that there are many names for it. Among them, the more commonly used ones are “initiation story” or “novel of initiation”, “growing-up novel”, “coming-of-age novel”, “novel of youth” or “novel of adolescence”, “novel of life”, etc. For so many names for English
6、initiation stories, there is no unanimous view in academic circles. Mordecai Marcus, in his article “What is an Initiation Story?”, offers a provisional working definition which contains the main elements in initiation story: An initiation story may be said to show its young protagonist experiencing
7、 a significant change of knowledge about the world or himself, or a change of character, or of both, and this change must point or lead him towards an adult world. It may or may not contain some form of ritual, but it should give some evidence that the change is at least likely to have permanent eff
8、ects. (Marcus, 1969:29) The famous theoretician of literature and art, Bakhtin, has ever made a specialized study on initiation stories. In his Bildungsroman and Its Significance in the Realist History he expounded the features, classifications and characters of initiation stories systematically. He
9、 pointed out that, Most novels only master the fixed characters, and they are in a large amount and dominant status. Besides that, there is another type of novel which is rarely known. Novels of this type create characters in static unities but dynamic ones. The characteristic of a hero in the formu
10、la of this kind of novel becomes a variable, and then the changes of the hero contain a sense of story. So the plot of the novel gets recognized anew and reconstructed essentially, and time goes into the hero and the image itself. So this type of novel can generally be called initiation stories. (芮渝
11、平,2004:6)In short, an initiation story has a theme of narrating the course of ones growing-up; it tells the experiences of the character; through the narrative about one or more characters experience of growing-up, it reflects the course of changing form immaturity to maturity in mind and psychology
12、 of the characters. Initiation stories cannot be identified by the age of their heroes or be standardized. As a literary theme which can be discussed by people of different times over and over again, “initiation problems” are not merely the problem of maturity in physiology. Some heroes in initiatio
13、n stories are even older than thirty years old, for instance, the hero in Song of Solomon. Since till now there has always been lacking of systematic study on initiation stories in China, and no enough attention, either, paid to the study or introduction of American initiation stories, then Professo
14、r Rui Yuping from Ningbo University published her book, A Study of American Initiation Stories at the proper time in May, 2004. It systematically introduces the development of initiation stories in Europe and in American, and makes more analyses on the features of American Initiation stories. And it
15、 gives the thesis much revelation.1.2 Mark Twains Two AdventuresAmong Mark Twains major works, the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn most strikingly stand out. In the Encyclopedia American, we read “He(Mark Twain)is best known for two novel of boyhood life on the Missis
16、sippi River in the mid-19th century Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer”(Grolier, 1981:291). Also in the New Encyclopedia, we read, Mark Twain “won a worldwide audience for his stories of the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (Turner, 1980:806). Although more than ninety y
17、ears has passed since his death, his two Adventures written a century ago still remain one of the first choices in literary reading.1.2.1 Social Background of the Two AdventuresAfter four years of fighting in the Civil War, the industrialized North defeated the agrarian South, which not only protect
18、ed the integrity of the United States as an indivisible nation, but also made American head toward capitalism. Increasing industrialization and mechanization propelled an economic boom that made America step into a prosperous age. However, industrialization brought in problems, like a significant in
19、crease in evil and crime. Meanwhile, the old customs and conventions still remained in America, such as the abolition of slavery and equal chance for everyone was not perfectly achieved since some states in the south continued to deprive of the former slaves rights to vote through certain laws. Both
20、 the rising step and the dark side of America are reflected in Mark Twains two Adventures composed from 1870 to 1884. In the two Adventures, under the help of the two children protagonists, Mark Twain on the one hand, showed great concern for the good nature of human beings and symbolized Americans
21、rise with Toms and Hucks moral growth, on the other hand, threw strong criticism on the society he lived in. 1.2.2 Literary Background of the Two AdventuresMark Twain drew a vivid picture of his hometown and the Mississippi region of which he knew best in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. After the C
22、ivil a number of American writers accentuated “fidelity to a particular geographical section and a faithful representation of its habits, speech, manners, history, folklore, or beliefs” (吴定柏,2004:72) in their works, whose mode of writing is regionalism. Being a subordinate order of realism, regional
23、ism indicates that an author writes about what is unique in his or her living section. The local color writing is the form of regionalism, which came to prominence in the United States in the late 19th century.The main features of local fiction are summarized by Wu Dingbo in the following ways. Loca
24、l color fiction describes the exotic and the picturesque, namely, things that are not common to other region. Local color fiction glorifies the past. The writers are nostalgic about the past as they are really trying to describe things would be lost. But local color is not merely as nostalgia but al
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