'In that New World which is the Old': New World/Old World inversion in Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World'.

摘要

“‘In That New World Which Is The Old’: New World/Old World Inversion In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World” examines the inversion of the concepts Old World, specifically associated with England, and New World, specifically associated with America, in the novel Brave New World. After examining and denotatively defining the terms Old World and New World, this thesis argues that the New World/Old World inversion in Huxley's dystopian novel exists because of Anglo-American cultural and political events of the 1920s and early 1930s, namely, the United States' rise as a military, political, and cultural superpower following World War I and Great Britain's concurrent early imperial dissolution and declining political power. Specifically, I argue that the New World/Old World inversion of Brave New World stands as Huxley's attempt, whether inadvertent or deliberate, to check the progress of modernity and the shift of political, economic, and military power from Europe to America, that is, from the old World to the New. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).