Living and creating in the tumultuous decades from the 1960s through 1980s, Thomas Pynchon unfalteringly chooses the countercultural and civil rights movements in the United States of that age as the permanent topic o...Living and creating in the tumultuous decades from the 1960s through 1980s, Thomas Pynchon unfalteringly chooses the countercultural and civil rights movements in the United States of that age as the permanent topic of his fiction. It can be seen from Pynchon＇s dramatic, sometimes fantastic narratives about these movements that the failure of the countercultural movements lies in their illusive nature in contrast with the hypocrisy and disproportionate power of the government to destruct these movements, and that the presence of American racial problems results to a great degree from the sloth prevailing over various institutions in American society when dealing with racial inequality and from American white racists＇ desire to eliminate an imagined threat in the face of the minorities. This paper tries to provide a different understanding that Pynchon＇s writing of the marginalized or surrealistic issues in these countercultural and civil rights movements is his strategy to expose the falsehood of American myth of democracy.展开更多
Nowadays, the study of myths is rather neglected as a field of research in sociology. There is a void that this paper would like to contribute to filling. It outlines a theoretical and empirical sociological approach ...Nowadays, the study of myths is rather neglected as a field of research in sociology. There is a void that this paper would like to contribute to filling. It outlines a theoretical and empirical sociological approach to social myths as a major component of collective imaginaries and a universal sociological mechanism through time and space. The article recalls the major functions performed by myths in every society （modem as well as ＂primitive＂）, introduces new concepts, and sets forth an analytical framework designed to account for the emergence, the reproduction, and the decline of myths, as sacralised collective representations.展开更多
文摘Living and creating in the tumultuous decades from the 1960s through 1980s, Thomas Pynchon unfalteringly chooses the countercultural and civil rights movements in the United States of that age as the permanent topic of his fiction. It can be seen from Pynchon＇s dramatic, sometimes fantastic narratives about these movements that the failure of the countercultural movements lies in their illusive nature in contrast with the hypocrisy and disproportionate power of the government to destruct these movements, and that the presence of American racial problems results to a great degree from the sloth prevailing over various institutions in American society when dealing with racial inequality and from American white racists＇ desire to eliminate an imagined threat in the face of the minorities. This paper tries to provide a different understanding that Pynchon＇s writing of the marginalized or surrealistic issues in these countercultural and civil rights movements is his strategy to expose the falsehood of American myth of democracy.
文摘Nowadays, the study of myths is rather neglected as a field of research in sociology. There is a void that this paper would like to contribute to filling. It outlines a theoretical and empirical sociological approach to social myths as a major component of collective imaginaries and a universal sociological mechanism through time and space. The article recalls the major functions performed by myths in every society （modem as well as ＂primitive＂）, introduces new concepts, and sets forth an analytical framework designed to account for the emergence, the reproduction, and the decline of myths, as sacralised collective representations.
