论亨利·詹姆斯《鸽翼》中的情感商品化-英语语言文学专业论文.docxVIP

En English Abstract II II Abstract Henry James is a master of psychological realism in literature at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century. His international-theme fictions mainly depict Americans? close contact with Europeans and foreign relations between America and Europe, of which The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903) and The Golden Bowl (1904), three of his later works, are at the top of such a theme. With new perspectives and vivid images, The Wings of the Dove was ranked by Modern Library twenty-sixth on its list of the one hundred best English-language novels of the twentieth century in 1998. “Conspicuous consumption” is first advanced by Thorstein Bunde Veblen, a leader of the institutional economics movement, and is defined by him as extravagant and wasteful consumption of the leisure class. Veblen points out in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), a differentiation in consumption begins at a point in economic evolution and the utility of consumption as an evidence of wealth is deemed a derivative growth. He defines this kind of consumption, which works as an evidence of wealth, as conspicuous consumption and connects it to consumption of luxuries in the leisure class. In his view, luxuries and the comforts of life belong to the leisure class; the consumption of luxuries, in the true sense, is a consumption directed to the comfort or the good repute or the evidence of wealth and position of the leisure class and beyond the leisure class?s minimum require for subsistence and physical efficiency. This thesis borrows Veblen?s idea of conspicuous consumption and mainly focuses on the heroine of The Wings of the Dove, Milly Theale?s consumption of affections to explore the leisure class?s life style and consumption concept and morality affected by consumer culture of the Gilded Age. First, it deals with the purchase of maternal love. Milly, an heiress of New York, tries to find a motherly companion after a se