Study On Literary Aesthetic Value Of Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You Based On Response-inviting Structure

As a fledgling Chinese-American female writer in the 21st century,Celeste Ng's novel Everything I Never Told You has gained wide attention since its publication in 2014,and it was awarded the best book of 2014 by American website Amazon.Although Ng has only one literary work published,her brilliance and talent in literature writing have already been shown in this debut.This debut novel tells a tragic story of an interracial family in 1970s and reflects the education and growth problem of children in interracial family,exquisitely and euphemistically.Many book reviewers had studied on this novel about its description of images and themes and yielded some results.However,there is seldom any study about the literariness and aesthetic value of the work itself.So this thesis tries to extend the study range from culture and ethnicity to literariness and aesthetic value of work.This thesis takes Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You as research text and analyzes the text based on Iser's response-inviting structure in Reception Aesthetics Theory,roundly from the aspects of narrative structure,semantic construction,rhetorical devices and sentiments.Thus,the aesthetic value can be concluded through the analysis.The thesis firstly introduces the work Everything I Never Told You and the author Celeste Ng.Also,the literature review of Chinese-American literature in 21st century and researches on Everything I Never Told You are generalized.Then it elaborates the theoretical basis-Iser's response-inviting structure and the five levels of literary work structure raised by Zhu Liyuan,a domestic expert of Reception Aesthetics Theory,as well as the studies on them at home and abroad.It follows to analyze how response-inviting structure is embodied in the following aspects-unique narrative structure,semantic construction,rhetorical devices and multiple sentiments.Finally,the thesis concludes that there is full of features of response-inviting structure in every aspect of this novel,which constantly calls for readers'participation in the meaning construction,making the literary work totally open to readers.Thus,readers are motivated and stimulated to think,feeling the aesthetic pleasure themselves.The aesthetic value can be reflected through different aspects of this novel during the reading process.The author of this thesis expects that this debut novel could attract more attention from scholars and students who devote to the study of Chinese-American culture and literature,to enrich its research findings,because this is really a work worth studying and exploring.Meanwhile,the author of this thesis hopes to provide a helpful reference to future study on Everything I Never Told You and Celeste Ng' future works.