Space Narration In Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary is the representative work of Flaubert, a famous French novelist in 18 th century. Being profound in theme and distinctive in style, Madame Bovary has been praised as an excellent modal of modern fiction and has been explored by scholars from various aspects. So far, studies on the writing skills of the novel mainly focus on some traditional aspects, such as focalization and narrative discourse. Space narration, which can reveal the unique writing style of Madame Bovary, is pitifully ignored.Based on Gabriel Zoran’s theory, this thesis focuses on the space narration, as well as other writing skills in Madame Bovary, and explores the active effects exerted by them on the construction of the content and the theme. According to Gabriel Zoran, space in narrative texts can be divided into three levels vertically: the topographical level, the chronotopic level and the textual level.The chronotopic level of space in Madame Bovary is of great importance, including synchronic space and diachronic space. The depiction of different states of objects and characters creates special artistic effects. The diachronic space determines the construction of the text and can be seen as the narrative clue of the whole novel. Description of the topographical level of space is divided into meaningful description and meaningless description according to their relationship with the theme and the content. Characters as a special kind of existence in space show the features of space and provide internal focalization of writing space. The textual level of space in Madame Bovary is reconstructed from four aspects: the selection of language, the temporal order of spatial structure, the contrast between ―here‖ and ―there‖, and spatial juxtaposition. The forth one is a distinctive feature of Madame Bovary.By analyzing Madame Bovary from the standpoint of narratology, this thesis aims to draw out the practical meaning of narrative theories in literary study and research.