On Narrative Techniques In Under My Skin

As one of the best known contemporary female writers,Doris Lessing is notable for her elusive themes and varied styles.She has produced lots of excellent literary works in her life that have exerted a profound influence on British literature as well as on world literature.However,most critics and scholars abroad and at home focus their studies on novels of Lessing,and researches on her autobiography Under My Skin are insufficient By putting volume one of Doris Lessing’s autobiography Under My Skin in the light of female autobiographical tradition,this thesis probes into how Lessing inherits and enriches this kind of literary form on narrative techniques.This thesis includes five parts.The introduction part gives a general introduction to Lessing’s life and writing career,as well as literature reviews of Lessing and Under My Skin abroad and at home.It also gives the purpose and the outline of this thesis.Chapter one is an overview of male and female autobiographical tradition containing its definition,emergence and development,and theories involved in this thesis.Chapter two analyzes multiple uses of narrative persons in Under My Skin with the theory of personal narratives.Three kinds of personal pronouns are employed at the same time in this autobiography and the frequent shifts of them have the effects of shortening or enlarging the distance between narrator and the story,between readers and narrator and story,which not only reflects the author’s certain narrative intentions,but gives readers an unprecedented reading experience Chapter three interprets the relations between Under My Skin and other texts in this autobiography with intertextuality theory.Lessing puts Under My Skin into broad cultural context,and its mutual references and interaction with other previous texts are realized by means of intertextual skills such as citation,pastiche and collage,which not only demonstrates the author’s profound artistry,but also sheds new light on the interpretation of Under My Skin.Through the analysis above,this thesis comes to the conclusion that,by employing multiple uses of personal pronouns and involving quite a few previous texts in her work skillfully,Lessing inherits some of the established female traditions.Meanwhile,she enriches and develops this literary form.