Frances burney写的love and fashion简介!

Frances burney写的love and fashion简介!

This dissertation is an exploration of a central identity problem—the problem of the name—in Evelina (1778) and Cecilia (1782),the first two novels of Frances Burney (1752-1840).The present study is both an attempt to join in the new western recognition of Burney’s significance as a novelist and an effort to introduce Burney and her works into Chinese academic and critical horizon.The study makes distinctive contributions in its effective discussions of the important thematic and stylistic issues of Burney’s novels and in its inclusion of diverse social and cultural issues of the eighteenth century English society.
The present study adopts a kind of eclectic cultural approach,in dealing with issues as diverse as nationality,race,class,and ideology of Burney’s age,as evolving around the problem of the name in her novels.Theories such as feminism,psychoanalysis and Marxism lend their insights where they are needed,stylistics and narratology make the process of my close reading more productive,and fruits of cultural studies enrich my interpretation of broad cultural issues.
The present study is divided into two parts,respectively devoted to Evelina and Cecilia.One bridging section is arranged for each part to provide background discussions related to the novel’s contemporary reviews,etc.Chapter 1 discusses the organization of the prevailing social order in the world of Evelina and reveals the rich implications of its theme of recognition.Chapter 2 seeks to decode Burney’s successful use of comic violence in Evelina,through which Burney gives multi-layered satires and reveals many of the problems with the middle class of her age (such as xenophobia).Evelina’s suppressed maternal inheritance,and an important eighteenth-century social problem—the potent danger of incest,are also discussed.Chapter 3 gives a detailed analysis of the nature of the name conflict in Cecilia,and reveals Burney’s intended cross-section criticism of the major social powers of her day,which,though varying in their performances and evils,are coherent in exercising patriarchal tyranny.It is the plot concerning the companionate marriage of Cecilia and Mortimer that bears out Burney’s theme of independence and anti-tyranny.Chapter 4 explores the theme of woman’s independence in Cecilia through reading deeply into its scenes of masquerade,of madness and of female charity,and reveals the essentially marginal position of a woman in the eighteenth-century English society,with her individuality stifled.Burney’s writing techniques,such as foreshadowing,employment of doubles,and narrator’s voice and point of view,are discussed as related to the novel’s thematic depth.Finally,the Afterword will offer a summary of the present study and a prospective speculation of my future studies involving Burney’s last novel,The Wanderer.
This dissertation reveals Burney as a mature novelist with great depth,who shows throughout her novels a deep concern about women’s encumbered fate and their survival strategies,and who often gives cross-section criticism of the social evils of her day.