A Multidimensional Interpretation Of “Forest” In Peter Handke’s Novels

Peter Handke(1942-),an outstanding contemporary Austrian novelist,is also one of research emphases of Germany literature today.The life of Handke is legendary,as he is novelist,playwright,poet,and screenwriter.His unique personality has created a number of miracles in the German-language literary circle.He came to public notice with his first important drama,Offending the Audience in 1966,since then his dramatic pieces have aroused controversial reactions,nevertheless,he has won several literary awards.In 2019,Handke was awards Nobel Prize for Literature,cited for “an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience.” At present,most academic research on the specificity of human experience in Handke’s novels have focused on his linguistic techniques,narration and deep thoughts,however,few have noticed the natural imagery of his works.From the perspective of Handke’s personal experience and the imagery setting in his works,the forest is an important source of his experience and a carrier for the presentation of specificity.For a long time,the perception of forest has been functional,but when the forest landscape is described in words,the imagery of forest transcends functionality and has aesthetics.Therefore,in this paper,the rationality of the presence of the forest,the ethical values that the forest metaphorically represent,and the visualizing creation mode primarily formed by the forest landscape in Handke’s novels were studied from three dimensions: physical,metaphorical,and pictorial.Chapter one gave an introduction of Handke’s profile and the formation and embodiment of forest consciousness in the Central European countries,identified the influences of society,history and culture on the emotional conversion to the forest from antagonism to integration in Handke’s novels,and stated that the “marginal man” in Handke’s novels has the function of regional division.Chapter two extended the presence of the forest from reality to a metaphorical context,discussed how the law of jungle in the forest would affect the ethical choices of human beings,and focused on the survival demands of characters in Handke’s novels aroused in the process of dealing with self,family and society under the alternating scenarios of wildness and civilization,rationality and irrationality.Chapter three discussed Handke’s writing techniques of visualization of words,and stated the visualization mechanism and the influences of Western painting concepts on the composition of images during text writing.Handke’s narration of the forest mainly adjusts the visually perceived objects through a narrative progression with internal temporalization,coupled with color contrast to emphasize the tension of words.Given all that,taking the forest as a point to study Handke’s novels not only points out the specificity of forest landscape in novels,but also discusses Handke’s reflection on the existence circumstances of subjects and positive actions they take in the face of alienation of environment.