The Narrative Discourse And Gender Consciousness In The Edifying Stories Of The Holy Scrolls

By the end of the 1st century, the whole "Hebrew Bible" had truly completed the process of becoming Canon. Hebrew Bible consists of three sections: Torah, Neviim and Ketuvim. The Book of Ruth and the Book of Esther, Which are only two fictional stories of indoctrination of Folk Literature in the Holy Scrolls, usually called"Edifying Stories".They are not only exquisite works of art in the Bible, but also vividly reflect two women's love and the lofty patriotic sentiments during the Jewish community's troublous time. The two women, Ruth and Esther's fate are consistent with the fate of the Jewish community during the different circumstances. However, despite Ruth and Esther are called Jewish heroines, they have common fate with other women in the Bible, and they also demonstrate that women's general survival plight in a patriarchal society. Therefore, it is very necessary and meaningful to do research on the Narrative Discourse according to feminist gender theories. Unfortunately, as the important narrative volumes which record the history of the ancient Jews, there are so many deficiencies in the Narrative Discourse and gender studies of domestic and Western scholars. There is still a lack of systematic narrative analysis and clarified understanding of gender consciousness hidden in the narrative discourse of the Edifying Stories of the Holy Scrolls. So, the author has selected the Edifying Stories of the Holy Scrolls as the subject and combining feministic and narratological theories as a methodology to explore the mutual relationship between the narrative discourse and gender consciousness in the stories as well as the restriction of specific Narrative forms to gender consciousness.This paper consists of three parts: the preface, the text and the conclusion. The preface describes the source of dissertation topics, defines the study object and the theoretical categories, then reviews the history and summarizes the status quo of the Edifying Stories of the Holy Scrolls and the possible research space. Finally, the purpose and the methods of this research are presented clearly.The text part includes two chapters.The first chapter,"the Development of the Narratological Study of the Edifying Stories of the Holy Scrolls", consists of two parts. Section I reviews the history of the narrative studies of the Edifying Stories of the Holy Scrolls in terms of classical narratology, and points out that this analysis focuses on the artistic and formalistic qualities, such as studies on language , plot and structure, etc.Section II comments on the present studies on biblical narratives intervened by post-classical narratologies and gender consciousness. Post-classical narratologies emphasize the impact on the construction of narrative text exerted by the ideology. In practical researches,however, some scholars have overlooked the influence on the narration by the gender consciousness in the ideology, or, they have not deeply discussed the organic relationship between gender consciousness and internal narrative discourse of the Edifying Stories of the Holy Scrolls as a textual system, so, there exist many deficiencies and possible spaces in their researches.The second chapter:"Narrative Discourse of the Edifying Stories of the Holy Scrolls in the Perspective of Gender", consists of three sections. The author tries to discuss the gender consciousness hidden in the narrative discourse in the Edifying Stories of the Holy Scrolls though the methodology of focus, voice and rhetorical strategies. The first section firstly analyzes the focus in terms of the theories of Genette. The author finds out that in the Stories, male and female focusing-modes, such as Naomi, Ruth, Esther, Boaz, Mordecai, etc, are all patriarchal centrality. The second section mainly discusses the voice, which could be categorized into author-type narrative voice and character-type narrative voice in terms of the theories of Susan S. Lanser. Then, Boaz, Mordecai and Memucan's narrative voice expresses the typical male-supremacy ideology directly; Naomi, Ruth, and Esther's narrative voice expresses the ideology indirectly, and the rebel during the male society, Vashti, her narrative voice is speechless. The third section studies the narrative rhetorical strategies of the Edifying Stories of the Holy Scrolls, analyzes the repetition, contrast and omission, and mainly analyzes the contrast of the rhetorical strategy, and the author points out that there is three compared groups in the stories : heterosexual, isosexual, as well as between the potential concepts of nation. The narrator consistently airs to both sexes the male-centrality view by these rhetorical strategies.The conclusion is an in-depth summary of 3 points. 1) By a careful studying of the text, the author thinks that the Book of Esther and the Book of Ruth were not only stories told by men's world, but also stories told for the men's world; 2) The author points out that the male-centralized gender consciousness has close relations with patriarchal society, culture and national consciousness; 3) Narrating infused with gender ideas possesses huge power so as to define and confine the reader's mentality and psychology and ideology, then, the methods which Feminist scholars research on the narrative discourse and gender consciousness from a gender point of view and observing the changes in social gender awareness according to the changes in the nation and time, can be called an important and valuable research methods.