The Narrative Arts Of Defoe's Novels

This thesis analyzes the narrative arts of Defoe's novels from the discourse (expressive form of the narrative text) and the story (content form of the narrative text) by the basic theory of narratology together with the methods of traditional novel criticism, social historical criticism and literary history research, which is grounded on Daniel Defoe's three important novels Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders and Roxana. In the part of introduction, it presents Defoe's status in the history of English literature, current situation of research and relevant theories on descriptive levels of narrative works in narratology, and then puts forward the topic this thesis intends to probe into. The thesis is divided into three chapters: Chapter One discusses the difference between his novels and fictions before the 18th century from "authenticity" and "morality" of Defoe's novels; Chapter Two analyzes the characteristics of Defoe's novels in the aspect of discourse, including narrator, focalization, narrative time and narrative discourse; Chapter Three deals with the characteristics in characters and narrative structure of Defoe's novels in the aspect of story. Defoe's novels are created at an early stage in the development of the 18th century novels and he is regarded as the first important novelist in history of English literature. A grasp of the narrative arts of Defoe's novels will help to comprehend and search the laws of the development of narrative arts.