自然主义面纱--德莱塞思想实用主义和物质主义本质

自然主义面纱--德莱塞思想实用主义和物质主义本质THE VEIL OF NATURALISM

PRAGMATIC AND MATERIALISTIC ESSENCE

OF DREISERS VALUES

By

Huang Zefu

Under the supervision of

Associate Prof Qi Tao

A thesis

Submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts to the School of Foreign Studies

Anhui University

April 2008

Acknowledgements

I hereby express my heartfelt thanks to my thesis supervisor Associate

Professor Qi Tao for his consistent patience guidance and encouragement

Without his wisdom and enlightenment I cannot have todays humble achievement

His wide-ranging knowledge and critical acumen have led to many improvements

in the substance and phrasing of the present thesis

My gratitude also goes out to Professor Hua Quankun Professor Hong Zengliu

Professor Chen Zhengfa Professor Chen Bing Professor Zhu Yue Professor Zhou

Fangzhu and Professor Hu Jian for their illuminating lectures and earnest

instructions

I would also like to thank all those people who have spared their time and

efforts to offer me very valuable advice on improving the thesis Finally I want to extend my gratitude to my classmates for their

kind help not

only in my studies but also in my everyday life Their friendship and encouragement will always be cherished in my heart

i

Abstract

Theodore Dreiser was an outstanding American writer in the early

20th-century

American literature as well as one of the pioneers in the history of American

modern novel writing for which he and another two great writers William Faulkner

and Earnest Hemingway are honored with the title ―the Big

Three‖ of American

modern novels For more than 100 years critics have all been agreeing that Dreiser

is a naturalist writer since in his works there are a lot of naturalistic elements

Critics have already done some research on these naturalistic elements in Dreiser s

works However it is quite regrettable that barely anyone has paid attention to the

complexity of Dreiser s values in his works By comparing the differences and

similarities between his early work Sister Carrie and his mature worksTrilogy of

Desire the present thesis intends to illustrate that for Dreiser naturalism was only a

result of the specific conditions while what he really believed in was pragmatism

and materialism

The major difference between Sister Carrie and Trilogy of Desire

lies in

Dreiser s different interpretation of naturalism In Sister Carrie naturalism takes

the form of pessimistic determinism while in Trilogy of Desire it is shifted to