Author(s)

Li Qichang ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ School of English Studies, Xi'an International Studies University, Xi'an, China

Corresponding Author

Li Qichang

ABSTRACT

Edgar Lawrence Doctorow is one of the most eminent American post-modernist writers. He is acclaimed for his unique writing style which encompasses an innovative narration, rich detail and a seamless weaving of fiction with historical facts. In 1960, he published his first novel Welcome to Hard Times which is set in the 19th century American West, a period usually romanticized in literature and culture. The novel imbued with the 1960s' sense of alienation and questioning of traditional narratives, subverts the traditional genre trope and portrays the hash realities of a life on a frontier town. This term paper aims to analyze Welcome to Hard Times by examining the reciprocal relationship between the novel and its historical context, employing the new historicist's principle of historicity of text and texuality of history as articulated by scholar Louis Montrose. This paper finds that Doctorow's novel not only provides a window into the historical period it depicts but also into the period in which it was written, thus embodying the reciprocal nature of literature and history that is central to new historicist thought.

KEYWORDS

Edgar Lawrence Doctorow; Welcome to Hard Times; New Historicism

CITE THIS PAPER

Li Qichang, An Analysis of Welcome to Hard Times Based on New Historicism. Lecture Notes on Language and Literature (2024) Vol. 7: 71-74. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/langl.2024.070711.

REFERENCES

[1] Shen You. "Subverting the Western Genre, Reflecting on the Western Myth: A Study of E.L. Doctorow's Novel Welcome to Hard Times." Journal of Suzhou University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition). 05(2021): 167-174.
[2] Tang Yao. "Towards the Other: A Study of Transgression in E.L. Doctorow's Novels". 2017. PhD dissertation, Beijing Foreign Studies University.
[3] Brooks, Cleanth, and Robert Penn Warren. The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in theStructure of Poetry.San Francisco: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1975. Print.
[4] Doctorow, Edgar Lawrence. Welcome to Hard Times. New York: Vintage, 1971.Print.
[5] Montrose, Louis. "Professing the Renaissance: The Poetics and Politics of Culture." The New Historicism. Ed. H. Aram Veeser. London: Routledge, 1989. Print.

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