1. 研究目的与意义（文献综述包含参考文献）

The Floating Opera has attracted widespread attention from American readers since its inception. Different from Chinese readers, American readers have a very different attitude towards it. They think that the novel is extremely boring. Not only is there a lot of humorous and artificial aspects, but the meaning is also naive and ridiculous. There is no realism and deep feeling towards it. What#8217;s especially unbelievable is that the protagonist actually shares a wife of with his friend, triggering a triangular love relationship. Even in describing the professional law, there is a sense of entertainment for the reader, because Todd only sees the law as a game, and does not care about the ethics of the law. And all of this because the protagonist is an amateur nihilist. In his eyes, everything in reality is useless and meaningless, so he does not have to bear any responsibility. In addition to focusing on the negativity of the theme, the criticism of the novel also involves the sloppy form. Many critics have mentioned the shadow of Lawrence Stern, a British 18th-century novelist, in the novel of Barth. Whether it's specific details, such as a funny fart, a boring run-off, talking directly to the reader, or a network of plots that surrounds a philosophical topic in a novel, which is pretty annoying to the reader. How do we view this controversial novel eventually? In my opinion, the novel is indeed expressed by Chinese and foreign critics, the emptiness of existentialism, but that is only the appearance of the theme of the novel. The author is trying to use the mainstream thinking situation in the society at that time as the ideological background, to think about the ultimate meaning of life, and to discuss the social moral significance of people. The result of his thinking is not to get along with the thought that was popular at the time, but to transcended the idea of nothingness. In his article How to Make a Universe, he made it clear: "The nihilism of the artist that I talked about is not the nihilism of Dewey or Sartre, because the nihilism of God" (TheFridayBok24) . His nihilism therefore means that artists are passionate as human beings, but they don#8217;t care about the value outside the works of art because ”like God, they created a piece of art, that is, a universe” ( twenty four). In his view, ”no matter what the artist has in mind, the art exists only for the sake of himself; the reality does not care how the Emperor only exists for himself” (24). We know that nihilism's attitude of suspicion and denial of all values is reflected in a lack of faith, because in the eyes of nihilists, all values are human consciousness#8217; creation, and there is no objective necessity in itself. Barth emphasizes the creativity and value of art. Once the value of acknowledgment exists, once he persists in pursuing art, he loses his emptiness and loses the positive and active nature of action. This is consistent with his consistent life and creative attitude. He has always been concerned with the morality and drama of his works, and he also values the practical significance of his works. He once said that he was deeply influenced by the Brazilian novelist Machadode Asis, who learned from the latter "to combine the fun of form with true emotions and a certain degree of realism. (The Floating Opera vi). When talking about the protagonist Todd of The Floating Opera and The End of the Road, he said, "If readers regard their bad situation as psychopathological rather than symbolic, then the novel loses morality~ Dramatic meaning". These are enough to prove that Bath does not only express the nihilistic and negative attitudes of life in his works, but uses the form of playful literature to construct a unique universe with a high symbolic meaning, referring to reality and representing moral orientation. , expressing the thinking and choice of life.

2. 研究的基本内容、问题解决措施及方案

Firstly, I tried to read as much nihilistic novels as possible, trying to seek more about nihilism, such as Sartre#8217;s The Stranger. I also read some works about existentialism, such existentialism and nihilism share lots of thing in common, they both reviewed the absurdity and meaninglessness of the world. Secondly, I had to do some research on the Internet for previous studies. Finding related papers on website like CNKI, looking into school online library and E-library, watching videos on the YouTuBe which introduces nihilism and existentialism in varies kinds of way, I have collected an enough amount of information about the book, which helped my thesis writing. Having those information, I started to figure out the thesis structure. Finally, I figured out the outline of my paper. I would talk about the nihilism reviewed in the novel from three aspects : Todd#8217;s love life, Todd#8217;s awareness of death, Todd#8217;s nihilistic philosophy of life.