The Functions Of The Narrator In Vanity Fair

William Makepeace Thackeray was an outstanding critical writer in England in the 19^th century. Vanity Fair is his masterpiece and it is still considered as a great work now. Thackeray's Vanity Fair is as different from the eighteenth century 'dialogue' as it is from the twentieth century one. It demands the reader to find for himself the key to a many sided puzzle. Though the reader has to make his own discoveries, the narrator provides him with unmistakable clues to guide him in his research. This thesis focuses on the analysis of the functions of the narrator in Vanity Fair and the effects of his narration. It is made up of five chapters. Chapter One is a general introduction to Vanity Fair, Thackeray's life and the social background. Chapter Two gives the definition of narrative in terms of narratology and elaborates on the relations among author, implied author, narrator, narratee, implied reader and reader. Chapter Three makes an analysis of the four functions of the narrator: the directing function, the communicative function, the testimonial function and the ideological function. Chapter Four not only talks about effects of the narrator's narration on the style of the text, but also on the readers' aesthetic reading. Different points of view provide different perspectives from which characters and events are observed, and endow the characters and events with unusual complexity, and the novel with greater significance. The chapter also elaborates on the unreliability of the narrator and the necessity of the readers' reconstruction of the text. Chapter Five is the conclusion. It points out that the functions of the narrator play an important role in revealing the theme of Vanity Fair.