叙事理论在英美文学作品赏析中的应用

开封文化艺术职业学院 宋 葛

Introduction

In 2020,the novel coronavirus pandemic swept the whole world.College students were greatly influenced,and had to stay behind closed doors,with no way of returning to school for normal classroom learning.Without the daily routine of going to “Classroom-Canteen-Dormitory”,students were stuck at their homes,carefree and worriless.This actually opened up an ideal opportunity for students who enjoyed English and American literary works.Far from the madding crowd,they were joyfully immersed in the poetic ocean of literature.

Literary works are in essence literary narrative carriers.Much more importance should be attached to interpreting or decoding literature.Students are perforce required to grasp narrative theories of literary works and to actively apply these theories to text interpretation so as to gradually improve their interpreting ability.However,in the analysis of traditional British and American literary works,teachers place too much emphasis on the context of literary works,characterizations,and plots,and lay less stress on the interpretation of literary text itself.Therefore,in the process of researching and analyzing British and American literary works,more emphasis ought to be put on text interpretation,so that students are able to actively explore and optimize text interpretation approaches,and ultimately enhance the ability of expounding and appreciating British and American literary works.

Narratology and Narrative Theories

In terms of narratology,a variety of definitions have been accorded.French narratologist Tzvetan Todorov was the first to use the word “Narratologie” (English:narratology) in his bookGrammaroftheDecameron(1969),when analyzing narrative works.In the 1970s,“narratologie” received widespread attention by Western literary criticism and was translated as “narratology” in English.Chatman (1978:9) refered to it as “a structural research on narratives”.Mieke Bal (1985:3) called it “the theory of narrative texts”.French narratologist Gerard Genette (1983) held that narratology takes narrative literature as its research scope,and its research objects are reflected in the interlocking narrative discourse of story and narrative,that is,order,duration,frequency,mode and voice.Luo Gang,a well-known Chinese scholar,believes,“Narratology is a discipline that studies nature,forms,and functions of narration.Its research objects include stories,narrative discourse,narrative behavior,and so forth,and its fundamental focus is narrative literary works.”(Luo 1994:3) All these definitions are different in some aspects,but they all hold that narratology is a scientific study of the internal textual language of narrative works.

Generally speaking,narrative texts are divided into three closely related categories,namely,story,text and narrative discourse.Therefore,the interpretation of literary works is not simply about plot,characters and main ideas,but more importantly,about narrative forms,narrative functions,narrative voices,and narrative contexts,and the like,in order to achieve “a combination of description,interpretation and evaluation of texts” and “to provide a more and more comprehensive and refined metho-dology” (Lodge 1990:11).In so doing,the inner mystery of literary works is unraveled and its spiritual connotation discovered.This paper is to narrow down literary theories to narratology and take narratology as a scalpel to anatomize literary texts,hoping to form a deeper understanding of and insight into their internal texture,and ultimately cultivate and improve students’ literary conception and appreciation ability.

Problems in the Appreciation of British and American Literary Works

At present,teachers rack their brains to apply latest teaching concepts and methods to class teaching of British and American literature in China,which is aimed at constructing a more effective mode of pedagogy,and enhancing students’ taste of literature.However,the innovation of teaching concepts and methods has not fundamentally changed the traditional interpretating concepts of literary works,and most teachers pay more attention to the interpretation of literary texts.As a result,the analysis of literary works still remains confined to plots,authors.

Historically,students graduate from high schools to enter colleges without a systematical education in literature.Although there are extracurricular reading of Chinese and English classics,the pressure of schoolwork and enrollment prevents students from sparing much more effort.Students’ accumulation of literary works and reading experience are relatively insufficient.Their cognition and interpretation of literary works still remain at a lower level.They acquire no approach to elevating literature reading to a moral level of interpretation and a rational level of judgment.Accordingly,when students read British and American literary works without the teachers’ guidance,they tend to be at their wits’ end and fall into a state of perplexity and difficulty in understanding and analyzing texts.In addition,with the advancement of science and technology,not insignificant is the impact of the Internet and other media on them,which has been becoming increasingly great.Students would rather watch film adaptations and television versions of literary works than sit on the “cold benches” to gnaw on the original literary texts.Smart phones and the internet are luring students to replace brains with pictures and to substitute images for thinking,which results in their inability to enhance their artistic aesthetics and literary appreciation.

In fact,there are obvious problems of monoto-nous and unified pedagogical modes in the teaching of British and American literary works in universities.In the teaching process,teachers tend to analyze characters,plot designs,themes,and main ideas in novels,and convey these understandings to students.Some teachers just transfer to students the knowledge which is not internalized within themselves,and more importantly,they neglect the cultivation of students’ appreciation,cri-tical thinking and aesthetic skills.Although students have mastered certain basic knowledge,they are unable to appreciate the aesthetic feelings and moral ideas contained in the works.Students’ analysis just stays at a superficial level,not able to dig deep into the details of the literary texts.Just like the depiction of the “hat” in the opening chapter ofMadameBovary,most of the students tend to think that it is superfluous and redundant.As a matter of fact,this is Flaubert’s subtle and ingenious arrangement.In an absurd and preposterous way,the author ironizes the so-called “propertied”.It is apparent that the conventional teaching approach to interpreting literary works has greatly impeded the cultivation of students’ literary quality,and also seriously restrained students’ comprehensive ability and self-development.

Application Value of Narrative Theories

The conventional appreciation of British and American literary works tends to focus on themes,plots,characterizations,main ideas and even contexts.Among teaching activities,the knowledge of these aspects is often imparted to students.Nevertheless,what is often neglected is the cultivating of students’ text analysis ability and the discovery of profound spiritual connotations in literary works,and students lack the deep perception of the unique humanistic thoughts contained in literary works in the learning process.Consequently,as the purpose and effect of literary works are not organically related,students do not understand their deeper significance in terms of text analysis,which leads to their inability to find the artistic charm and moral connotations of texts.Literary value is greatly detracted.American literary critic Wayne Booth mentions what he is most concerned about inTheRhetoricofFictionis “the technique of non-didactic fiction,viewed as the art of communicating with readers” (Booth 1983:xiii).He aims to analyze the relationship between the author,narrators,characters and readers.What he studies is not what we usually understand as gorgeous words or syntactic relations,but the exploration of the organic correlations between narrative strategies and the readers’ reading effect.Additionally,Booth also stresses that “the moral question is really whether an author has an obligation to write well” (Booth 1983:386).Text interpretation is in effect that the reader utilizes relevant theories which have been mastered to effectively dig out the moral meanings and to actively construct and even reconstruct the textual meanings.

Chinese distinguished narratologist Shen Dan argues that “narratology is different from New Criticism and stylistics,because it attaches much importance to the exploration of rhetorical and structural techniques,such as an implied author,the reliability and unreliability of narrators,narrative distance and so on” (Shen 2020:85).American literary critic Norman N.Holland (1991) believes that every reader consciously or unconsciously brings self-cognition into the reading process and actively expounds literary works in order to obtain their artistic aesthetic or moral evaluation,thereby rebuilding his self-identity.Therefore,from this level of research and analysis,students apply narrative theories and related reading skills to the practice of reading British and American literary works,which certainly prompts them to spontaneously integrate their own personality,style,emotions,desires,beliefs,values,and so on,into text interpretation,to explore aesthetic thoughts and moral judgments contained in narrative texts,and ultimately to form a comprehensive and multi-angle cognition of literary works.It is obvious that the combination of narrative theories into the appreciation of British and American literary works has certain practical significance and aesthetic value,and it is worthwhile to be further studied and explored.

Dialectical Combination of Narrative Theories and Appreciation Practice

From the perspective of classroom teaching,the rational integration of narrative theories with the appreciation of British and American literary works in colleges and universities shatters the shackles of traditional teaching modes,helps students to complete the interpretation of the moral connotation of British and American literary works from a deeper level,and conduces to researching and interpreting literary works according to their own thinking,perception and even aesthetics.In addition,it is unnecessary for students,the subjective agents,to confine themselves to a passive knowledge reception in the classroom.Instead,the full play of the subjective initiative is their top priority.The precondition of the appropriate integration of theory and practice is a good command of narrative theories and reading skills,and the appropriate integration of these theories with text practice is greatly conducive to students’ actual textual interpretation.Only in this way can narrative theories and literature appreciation practice be combined effectively and dialectically,which consequently makes a dull reading more readable and enjoyable.Otherwise,appreciation and interpretation will be in predicament.

1.Teachers’ Simulation Intervention of Narrative Theories

As to the teaching and receiving of narrative theories,classroom teaching is particularly important.Teaching,instructions and solutions are indispensable.Teachers systematically teach related narrative theories in classrooms.Theoretical knowledge is the cornerstone.Teachers must first assist students to achieve a comprehensive command of narrative theories to ensure that students apply the basic ideas of narrative theories to research-related teaching contents during the process of interpreting British and American literary works,thereby helping them form a new understanding of British and American literary texts from a new perspective.Furthermore,when implementing teaching tasks,teachers take into consideration students’ respective aptitudes,as well as their inadequate knowledge reserves,in a bid to steer clear of some contents that may be controversial and unclear,such as narrative subject,narrative distance,narrative text,discourse power,and so forth.

As a discipline,narratology originated in the late 1960s,and its history is only more than 50 years.“During its formation,it has absorbed a large number of research results from related disciplines and various literary criticism trends,such as modern linguistics,Russian formalism,structuralism,post-structuralism,acceptance aesthetics,and so on.” (Hu 2004:2) It is clear that these theories are relatively complicated.Louis Tyson (2014) suggests that readers should read some monographs on narrative theories written by three narratologists,namely,Algirdas Greimas,Tzvetan Todorov,and Gerard Genette.They hold different views to analyze narrative texts,such as Greimas’ semiotic square models,Todorov’s grammatical structures,and Genette’s narrative discourse,which undoubtedly enriched narrative theories.Accordingly,when teachers utilize relevant theories to carry out simulation analysis,they try to avoid rigid theoretical explanations to students,and instead analyze and interpret specific examples of British and American li-terary works.With teachers’ purposeful and intentional intervention,students follow suit and dissect and illuminate texts pertinently and effectively.

Take F.Scot Fitzgerald’sTheGreatGatsbyas an example.As for teachers,this text is typically fit for classroom analysis in that narrative theories fit in with it properly.For another thing,students’ total familiarity with this novel makes the further and in-depth analysis smoother and more effectual.From the perspective of narrative perspective,the experiencing self is a demanding call in the tumultuous and flashy 1920s in the United States.At the same time,this kind of first-person narrative brings the reader closer.On the other hand,the narrating self examines the disillusioned “American Dream” with a more mature perspective,thus uncovering textual meanings and displaying the author’s moral value orientation.The author alternately uses the experiencing self and the narrating self to explain his profound outlook in a simple yet effective way,and to vividly portray the tragic image of the “great” Gatsby.Gatsby is not great at all,and the so-called “great” is just an irony.“Fitzgerald’s socially-oriented novel reflected American society in which social customs and moral values have changed dramatically.The characters and dreams under the distorted social and moral values inevitably were shattered in the cold and cruel reality.” (Jiang 2019:475)

Internal focalization allows readers to step by step go into the focalizer’s inner world,and to know his psychology and even plot deve-lopment.External focalization clearly presents the veins of plot deve-lopment,and attracts readers to track the storyline to witness the end of the protagonist’s fate.The shifting application of internal and external focalizations highlights the inevitable disillusionment of the “American Dream”.Through the different focalizers,the fiction depicts the miserable “Roaring Twenties”.Senior Editor ofSocietyWilliam Cain comparesTheGreatGatsbywith the current COVID-stricken American reality,and concludes that “the American Dream—the ideal that in this country anything is possible,and everyone can achieve the security of a good life—is nearly unattainable” (Cain 2020:18).

From the perspective of narrative time,the novel uses analepsis to create strong suspense for readers,avoiding the rigidity and monotony of the narrative.“Such narratives are designed to put the hero or heroine repeatedly into situations of extreme jeopardy,thus exciting in the reader emotions of sympathetic fear and anxiety as to the outcome.” (Lodge 1992:14) In terms of narrative duration,a large number of descriptions about Scenes appear in the novel,so that readers clearly witness the flou-rishing of hedonism after the collapse of American traditional Puritanism.At the same time,the fiction is interspersed with summary,ellipsis and pause to promote the development of the story plot and meanwhile to enrich its textual connotation.

From the above,there is no doubt that the effective integration of narrative theories into the ana-lysis and interpretation serves to make readers,instead of being obsessed with the love-hate entanglements in the novel,go deep into the internal texture and dig out its inherent values and morality,the protagonist’s profiteering and speculation,and the luxury and dissipation in the Jazz Age.

2.Students’ Application of Narrative Theories

The novel coronavirus pandemic has caused widespread illnesses and casualties and altered people’s social patterns and lifestyles,and students’ learning modes have been greatly influenced.Staying together for lectures in one classroom has been substituted for online meetings or rooms via a variety of APPs,but every crisis is an opportunity.Away from “the sound and the fury”,everyone has a room of his own and keep himself peaceful and calm.The accumulation and precipitation of theories call for peace,and the textual interpretation and appreciation also demand a good learning environment.“To engage in academic research requires a scientific attitude,a deep theoretical foundation,and a wealth of information accumulation” (Ge 2002:V).Indeed,the mastery of theories and the accumulation of information are not accomplished overnight.“Rome was not built in one day.” Both accumulation and perseverance are required.The application of narrative theories to narrative texts can effectively expand students’ understanding of texts and help them seek the textual meaning.

Where does the textual meaning derive from?Traditional literary criticism generally locates the significance at the author’s intentions,but the British and American new criticism criticizes the former as “intention fallacy”.Besides,Traditional literary criticism ignores the “intertextuality” between texts.New criticism holds that the text itself is where the meaning lies.“It is not the critic’s own and not the author’s.It is detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it.” (Lodge 1972:571) However,reader response criticism believes that the textual meaning is the result of the reader’s reading and is constructed through the reader’s critical thinking.It is true that these theories have certain historical significance,but the new college students of the 21stcentury,as readers,have not been confined to the inside or outside of texts,they flexibly use these narrative theories,communicate and converse with texts,and break the barriers of the textual meaning,in the hope of gradually improving the literary appreciation ability of their own.

Take McEwan’sAtonement(2003) as an example.In this novel,the author ingeniously adopts multiple and complicated narrative strategies to tell an extremely touching and fascinating story:the young heroine indirectly causes her sister’s death due to misunderstanding,and spends the next 59 years in creating a novel calledAtonementto redeem her sin.When it comes to narrative theories,the first and foremost is the metafiction narrative.The fiction is divided into four historical fragments.The first three fragments constitute a complete story:misunderstanding occurring-contradictions intensified-misunderstanding resolved-atonement completed.However,in the final part,there is a big reversal:the heroine who is more than 70 years old reveals the “mystery”:the so-called happy ending is “fiction”,which she makes up for atonement.The sister and her lover have already passed away.The heroine fabricates the happiness of her sister and her lover in this “fiction”.Aristotle called this kind of reversalperipeteia,which means the sudden transition from one state of situation to the other or even the opposite.The story which fascinates readers is actually an atonement “fiction” that the heroine creates.Unknowingly,readers are caught in this “fiction in the fiction”.Right here,metafiction narrative endows the fiction with an unexpected twist and a relatively reasonable surprise.As far as metafiction narrative is concerned,one of its greatest characteristics is to explore fiction theories in the fiction.At the end of the fiction,the heroine exclaims,“How can a novelist achieve atonement when,with her absolute power of deciding outcomes,she is also God?There is no one,no entity or higher form that she can appeal to,or be reconciled with,or that can forgive her.” (McEwan 2003:361) As Ge Fei (2002:V) said,when writing a novel,“You can let things take their natural course,just like riding a horse with lax reins,and write whatever you like to write.However,why is it so difficult?” As a matter of fact,this is all about the relationship between fiction and reality.The heroine reflects the creation of the fiction in the fiction,while philosophizing the creation of the fiction.At the same time,she also guides the reader to construct texts and stimulates readers’ sense of reading identity.

Another narrative feature in the fiction is unreliable narration.The heroine of the fiction is an implied author in the fictionAtonementshe herself creates.She creates an invisible narrator who talks about it in a pretentious manner,but the result is a journey of personal atonement in a different way.Looking back at the narrative,readers will find that the events happening in her novel are all strongly subjective and are typicaly unreliable narrations.Moreover,outside the heroine’sAtonementversion,the real author McEwan,as an implied author,constructs and creates the novalAtonement.In this complete framework of the novel,readers can read the McEwan versionAtonement,which seems more objective and more reliable than the heroine’s version.“The ‘implied author’ chooses,consciously or unconsciously,what we read;we infer him as an ideal,literary,created version of the real man;he is the sum of his own choices.” (Shen 2019:19) In terms of moral judgement on the heroine’s atonement,the author,namely,“the real man”,makes “his own choices”.On the one hand,he vi-vidly depicts the optimistic and pious image of the heroine,and on the other hand repeatedly underlines the impossibility of the atonement and the heroine’s disappointment and frustration.The author’s vacillating attitudes clearly displays the unreliability of narration,through which the author intentionally stimulates readers’ sympathy and empathy so that they can firmly and objectively make their own moral judgement on the heroine’s atonement.Whether it is metafiction narrative or unreliable narration,readers successfully attain a different aesthetic experience and moral judgment,thus triggering their further exploration and reflection on ethical value and human nature.

Conclusion

In summary,narrative theories have extremely important values in the appreciation of British and American literary works.Teachers need to strengthen the indoctrination of narrative theories in teaching practice,to promote the full play of teaching functions and to cultivate students’ comprehensive quality,in the hope of assisting students to improve their literary appreciation ability and artistic aesthetic ability.Besides,Students have to give full play to their own initiative and improve their self-learning ability.Whether online or offline,they need spare no efforts at mastering more literary theories and reading skills,combining relevant theories with text practice,and applying what they have learned to textual appreciation.Frankly speaking,literary theories are as vast as the sea,from which this paper just scoops a couple of droplets,taking narrative theories as a scalpel to anatomize literary texts and hoping to help students realize the importance of literary theories.The effective and dialectic combination between literary theories and textual appreciation practice is instrumental in cultivating students’ logical thinking and enhancing their textual appreciation ability,and meanwhile conducive to endowing a dull reading with defamiliarized aesthetic effect and inviting banal texts into a unique poetic world.