英语论文哪里有？本文所解释的“文本的历史性”是指文本的历史语境——民权运动——对创作的影响，以及小说中反映的历史事件，以及黑莉的个人生活经历——对小说的影响。通过分析发现，民权运动引发了黑人民族主义和黑人权力运动，从而引发了黑莉的寻根。
Chapter OneINTRODUCTION
1.2 Roots:The Saga of an American Family
Roots is a personal family history while revealing the dark side of American history.The work begins with Haley’s ancestor,Kunta Kinte’s original life in the Gambianvillage of Juffure,which is an honorable life of having their own beliefs and traditionsuntil the abduction happened to him.Since then,the dark history of slavery has beenrevealed through the personal experience of Kunta and his descendants,including thetough days in the Middle Passage,the cruelty of the white slave owners,the loss offreedom,and forth on.Among the characters,Kunta is impressed with his rebelliousspirit,because of his times of escape,even though he faces recaptures and punishments,and his refusal to submit to the owner’s order and to accept the English name,“Toby”,given by“his”owner;Chicken George,Kunta’s half-blood grandson,is anothercharacter remembered by the readers because of his talent and diligence for gamecocks,which makes readers proud of the author’s family that starts to have a genius who canbe a equal footing with the whites.The whole representation of the family history fullyaroused readers’sympathy for the roles were only normal people but faced unfair andmiserable destinies.
Chapter ThreeHISTORICITY OF TEXTS OF ROOTS
3.1 Historical Contexts of Roots
The New historicists emphasized the context of any text when reinterpreting it.Inthis sense,we propose one of the contexts is“the context of creating text”(J.Y.Zhang6),which is the social ideology in the background of the creation.For Roots,a bookpublished in 1976,it is a time during and after the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.This section will focus on how the ideology influenced Haley and how it is reflected inthe novel.Another context for the work is the historical context we intend to explore,which is,the interpretation of the historical background of the text,to exemplify the historicity of texts.
3.1.1 Civil Rights Movement and its reflections in Roots
Roots is published in 1976 when the country has just passed through the CivilRights Movement,a protest from the blacks for their equal human rights with othercitizens both in politics and public places as different kinds of boycotts.It is anoutbreak of tolerance for the long-time injustice and promotes blacks to fight forequality more than ever.On the one hand,the movement is an illustration of the blackthoughts of the past:collectively being excluded for a long time makes them united as awhole ideologically and fight for their benefits.On the other hand,the movementpromotes the blacks to fight more for their rights in both public life and culture.Blackwriters pay closer attention to the destiny of Black people all over the world than everbefore,they tried to build up their dignity,pride,and sense of self-value.
Chapter FourTEXTUALITY OF HISTORY OF ROOTS
4.1 Representing the African History
To affirm and strengthen the individuality of identity means to distinguish“theSelf”from“the Other”,especially when the identity is combined with a nation or ethnicgroup,one of the defining“the Self”behavior is to distinguish their culture from others’.Pan-Africanism is a representative thought of the blacks mentioned in the last century.It pays attention to the destiny of all the black people around the world,advocatingblack people to bond together.As a representative of Pan-Africanism,the“Back toAfrica”movement is founded by Marcus Garvey in the early 20th century.It intends tohelp all African-Americans move back to Africa and improve the relationship among all the blacks in the world.Seizing African or black culture means spiritually returning theethnic group,strengthens the self and group identification(J.W.Wang 14).Hence,wecan infer that Haley’s detailed descriptions on the African environment during Kunta’schildhood in the fiction as a behavior of“Back to Africa”.By representing the Kunta’sboyhood experience in his African hometown,Haley brings a piece of African historyfor the African Americans.
In Roots,through researching,Haley finds the hometown of his ancestor—KuntaKinte,to be Juffure in the Gambia.It is significant for Haley and other AfricanAmericans that it gives answers to“where are they from”and“how did they livebefore”.Reconnecting with the hometown of their ancestors allows them to regain theperception of affiliation that they barely gained in America,a place where they areoppressed,marginalized,assimilated,and forget their roots for a long period.Meanwhile,it reshapes and subverts the universal cognition of Africa that it is awasteland,and it fills the blank in the American literature on describing Africa.In thefollowing parts,we will examine the detailed African history revealed in Roots from theaspects of the past of the whole country and the daily life of Mandinkas in Juffure.
4.2 Oppression of the Blacks during Slavery
As the history of Afro-Americans unfolds,Roots inextricably exposes the dark sideof slavery:the oppression of the white people against the black slaves.It results fromthe alienation,or we can say differentiation,from whites to blacks based on theEthnocentrism in that time.Created in Civil Rights Movement,a period when peopleemphasize equal human rights more than ever,the novel highlights the realization ofequal human rights through depictions of unequal relationships in oppression.
In this part,we will concentrate on personal histories of Haley’s ancestors,which exemplify the piece of history Haley constructed for his people.Kunta’s experience ofbeing oppressed,mirroring the dark side of oppression,and conceiving it as a protest ofblacks against oppression.For another,as representatives of female ancestors of today’sAfro-Americans,Bell and Kizzy suffer from both the mental and physical trauma intheir experiences,which is another concentration to analyze the oppression.
Chapter FiveCONCLUSION
Telling the histories of seven generations in America,Roots rewrites AfricanAmerican history from the African origin to their development in the last half of thetwentieth century.Haley believed that it was their faith in their black heritage and blackculture that make them defeat slavery and their story constituted the history of theirpeople,even of the nation.Through investigation,a few research found conducted onthe New Historicism view on Roots,especially through the“textuality of history”and“historicity of texts”.Therefore,this thesis aims to analyze the work from the aspect ofNew Historicism.
The“historicity of texts”interpreted in this thesis is the influence of the historicalcontexts of the text—the Civil Rights Movement to the creation and the historicalevents reflected in the novel together with Haley’s personal life experiences to the novel.Through analysis,it is found that the Civil Rights Movement provoke black nationalismand the Black Power movement which triggered Haley to find his roots.The great massfervor for regaining the African names and traditional religious beliefs of AfricanAmericans at that time were revealed as Kunta Kinte’s insistence on his own Africanname and religious belief in the story.Another thing was that several historical eventsare vividly reflected through the text they have the intertextuality with the novel.Lastbut not least,several components of Haley’s personal life influenced his creation,whichwas his family’s history set the main setting,characters,and plot of the whole novel.Meanwhile,his contact with Malcolm X influenced his creation and the portrayal of hisAfrican ancestor,Kunta Kinte.
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