The Game Of Narrative

Being different from the existing researches on Eco's novels and semeiology, the thesis will investigate Eco's aesthetics of novels,in the context of the post-modernism and studies of intellectuals in the 20th century. Therefore, Eco is concerned about in the thesis not only in the aspect of novelistic theory, but also will be more accordant with the interpretation of the spirit of poetics in Eco's writing. The study of poetics is relating to the individuality and the specificity, as well as provides ethical principles for the humanities. It is the same spirit of Utopia exsited in traditional studies of intellectuals that claimed the transcendency over the reality, also in aesthetic standards in the realm of art. However, the academic diversification of intellectuals, and, the theorization of literary research, have induced the skepticism into the traditional humanism ideal, when we have been in the post-modernism time. It will appeared in Eco's aesthetics of novels, as we will see, a principal character of intellective interest in his academic research and writings, would be what kind of significance to the traditional humanism research.The thesis will be divided into Eco's ontology of novels, formalism of novels, and hermeneutics of novels, ended in the analysis of Eco's axiology of novels. And the thesis especially will place Eco's opinion about novels in the position of traditional western literary theory, at the same time will discuss how Eco thought about and utilized the tradition of western literary theory. In the ontology of novels, Eco asserted that the truth of novels would be presented in a possible world which is authentic, through the imagination and the writing skill of the author. And also, Eco excluded author's subjective experience from fictioneering, went in for impersonalization of novel art, which resulted in ignoring the truth of novels. In the same way, in the ontology of novels, Eco derived from the sources of F.R.Leavis, T.S. Eliot and New Criticism, emphasized the autonomy of art; On the other hand, Eco erased strict moral standards from the formers' comparatively, so as to the isolation of Eco's formalism of novels folded in paper-thin outerwear within ethic principles. In the axiology of novels, Eco argued against the theory's over-interpretation of the text, defined the interpretation to the abstract "textual intention", which leading to ignoring readers, and making the text-interpretation become a kind of pleasant intellective game.Then, it will direct to analyze the "game", as the essential concept of Eco's aesthetics of novels. It advocates some release of emotional or intellective need only in suppositional world, nothing to do with the real life, which can be seen as an appearance of post-modernism hedonism or consumerism at all. The thesis will point out that, the novel has certain nature of the game, but absolutely does not equal to the game. The spirit of novels should direct to the hope of human life, human emotion, and also the dream.