Narrative Patterns And Processes Of Poetry

For more than 40 years since narratology was formally brought into the academicworld, it has been mainly utilized in the study of stories and novels. This dissertationattempts to apply the theory and methods of narratology in the interpretation of poetry.It takes Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads and the Book of Poetry asexemplars to analyze the narrative patterns and processes of poetry. Some other poemsin both English and Chinese literature are also quoted so as to seek profound andcomprehensive insights into the narrative rules of poetry.This dissertation is composed of five chapters. The first chapter is a generalcomparison between English and Scottish Popular Ballads and the Book of Poetry. Itgives the author's definition of the ballad and points out that the characteristics of theballad are impersonality, and the absence of subjectivity and self-consciousness. Then,it describes how these two collections of poetry were compiled and their literary statusas recognized by scholars. This chapter also describes their critical history and that oftheir compilers. The second chapter focuses on narratology and its development, andanalyzes the feasibility of applying its theory and methods in the study of poetry.The third chapter centers on the narrative patterns of poetry. It beans with theclassical definitions given by Aristotle, representing the western view of poetry, andYao's Classics in Shang Shu (Supreme Book), representing the Chinese view. Thesedefinitions have prescribed the narrative patterns or modes of English poetry andChinese poetry, leading to the phenomenon that English ballads stress the integrity ofstory, while Chinese poems emphasize discourse on the poet's thoughts, ideals andambitions. Due to different characteristics of English ballads and Chinese poems, theydiffer in their choice of the modes of perspectives; the former choose mainly thethird-person to stay impersonal and objective, while the latter choose mainly the first-person to express the poet's personal pursuit. However, the objective narration ofthe English ballads and the third-person narration of the Chinese poems are sometimesdisrupted by the first-person narrator who may abruptly assmne the narration at thebeginning, in the middle or at the end of the text This chapter explores comparativelythe typical modes of poetic expressions. The three major modes of Chinese poetry, fu, biand xing are compared accordingly with speech and with western rhetorical devices,metaphor and metonymy. It is found that their resemblances actually overlap. A xingexpression, for instance, may include either metaphor or metonymy, or both. Thischapter also discusses the metrical modes of poetry—mainly rhythm and rhyme. Thenit investigates the musical features of both the English ballads and the Chinese poems.The fourth chapter probes into the narrative processes of poetry. It falls into threesections: plotting, characterization and the making of poetry. The Chinese poems do notattach much importance to the design of plots, but the English ballads take it as anessential element of narration. The chapter employs the method of Propp's morphologyto interpret how the plots of some English ballads and Chinese poems are arranged. Incharacterization, although most of the characters in poetry are more static than dynamic,English ballads and Chinese poems have both created many colorful characters such asthe brave sailor Sir Patrick Spens, the great Queen Jane, the outlaw Robin Hood, andmany miscellaneous abandoned women, etc. With these characters to drive thedevelopment of action, a narrative text is thus formulated. A text must be interpreted inan appropriate context, and although some poems are heavily dependent on context,others are relatively independent of it. The last section of this chapter also discusseshow the poetic texts begin and how they end. It summarizes five major types ofbeginnings for both English ballads and Chinese poems, and two major modes ofendings. The making of poetic texts is inseparable from the use of cohesive ties. Apartfrom the five major ties of Halliday and Hasan, and a phonetic tie of Hu Zhuanglin, this chapter has put forward another four ties: antithetic cohesion, over-cohesion,under-cohesion and anti-cohesion.The last chapter summarizes the whole dissertation, and concludes that the theoryand methods of narratology are not only feasible but also useful in the interpretation ofpoetry.