A Study Of James Phelan's Rhetorical Theory Of Narrative

In succession to the"epistemological turn"and the"linguistic turn", the"narrative turn"has made its due arrival in the humanities (Kreiswirth, 1992, 2005). Marie-Laure Ryan (2007: 22) postulates that with the"narrative turn in the humanities"giving way to the"narrative turn everywhere (politics, science studies, law, medicine, and last, but not least, cognitive science), few words have enjoyed so much use and suffered so much abuse as narrative and its partial synonym, story"(italics original). The expansion of the"narrative turn in the humanities"to the"narrative turn everywhere"further consolidates David Herman's (2007a: 4) argument that narrative is a"multifaceted object of inquiry becoming a central concern in a wide range of disciplines and research contexts."Since the 1990s, narratology has gradually walked out of the shadow of deconstruction and has become a prominent discipline in literary studies. In its postclassical phase, western narrative studies have reaped a considerable large number of fruitful results—both in terms of narrative poetics and narrative criticism. It is safe to argue that"the present age witnesses the most flourishing of narrative studies and narrative theory in the west"(Shen, Han, and Wang, 2005: 203). In describing the renaissance of classical narratology, the rise of postclassical narratology, and the shift of the global centre of narrative studies (from France to North America), James Phelan deserves our greatest attention. Phelan is one of the leading postclassical rhetorical theorists of narrative, an outstanding representative of the third generation of"the Chicago School". It is Phelan who has brought"the Chicago School"to a new stage of development, and has led narratology from the classical era to the postclassical era, and grow into a flourishing discipline in North America as well as in the rest of world.Taking Phelan's rhetorical theory of narrative as its central concern, this dissertation grounds itself upon the six rhetorical principles put forth by Phelan. It mainly investigates six major issues of Phelan's rhetorical theory of narrative, namely, narrative progression, character narrator, unreliable narration, focalization, narrative judgments, and narrative ethics. Meanwhile, this dissertation makes a comparative study between Phelan's rhetorical theory of narrative and classical narratology, and other strands of postclassical narratology such as cognitive narratology, feminist narratology and postcolonial narratology, in the hope of examining how Phelan's rhetorical theory of narrative inherits as well as goes beyond the classical narratology, and explores the conflicting and complementary relationship between his rhetorical theory of narrative and other postclassical approaches. The overarching goals of this dissertation are, first and foremost, to make a systematic and in-depth study of Phelan's rhetorical theory of narrative, so as to clarify relevant misreadings, to expose its blindnesses and insights, and to further promote Phelan studies in China and the rest of the world; second, to cast a glance at the heritage of classical narratology and recent development of postclassical narratology, so as not only to open up an avenue for the further development of both classical narratology and postclassical narratology, but also to offer suggestions for the development of narrative poetics and narrative criticism in China.The whole dissertation is composed of eight chapters. The first chapter serves as an introduction. It begins with introducing Phelan's achievements, contributions to and influences on narrative studies. Apart from a brief illumination of Phelan's major rhetorical principles and central issues of rhetorical narratology, it makes a detailed review of current Phelan studies. Though it is to be admitted that the existing studies of Phelan have produced a number of fruitful results, compared with the complexity and richness of Phelan's rhetorical theory of narrative, the current state of Phelan studies suffers from a few weaknesses such as the fragmented and repeated introductions of Phelan's theory, which are not only narrow in scope but also lack of depth and attentive readings of his work. The chapter ends with introducing the organization of the dissertation.The second chapter is devoted to Phelan's theory of narrative progression. It is argued that Phelan's rhetorical theory of narrative is a highlight of postclassical narratology. Along somewhat similar lines, it is also safe to claim that narrative progression is a highlight of Phelan's rhetorical theory of narrative. Both traditional novelistic theorists and classical narratologists have underestimated the importance of the role played by the reader in the poetics of plot. According to Phelan, narrative progression is a result of two dynamics: textual dynamics, which refers to the instabilities between characters or between characters and their situations, and readerly dynamics, which refers to the tensions between readers and narrators, or between readers and implied authors. It is both in the sense of readerly dynamics and progression in hybrid narrative forms (lyric narratives and portrait narratives) that narrative progression goes beyond the poetics of plot.The third chapter is mainly concerned with Phelan's theory of character narrator. Undeniably, there is always a narrator in a narrative text. The reason why some western narratologists argue that there are some narratorless narratives lies in their equating the"invisibility"of some narrators to their"non-existence". Unlike his predecessors and his contemporaries, Phelan classifies narrators into two general categories—character narrator and non-character, by taking narrators'involvement in the events they narrate as a criterion. Phelan also elaborates on the basic types and functions of character narrators, which leads him to draw a conclusion that character narration is an art of indirect communication.The fourth chapter deals with the issue of unreliable narration, which is a hot topic in current narratology. In terms of unreliable narration, on the one hand, in revisiting the essence of classical rhetorical narratology by taking the distance between the narrator and the implied author as a yardstick, Phelan extends"unreliable narration"from two axes (facts/events, and ethics) to three axes (facts/events, ethics, and knowledge/perception), and illustrates its six subtypes in detail: misreporting, underreporting, misreading, underreading, misregarding, and underregarding. On the other hand, Phelan frees himself from the bondage of classical rhetorical narratology. Given the distance between the narrator and the authorial audience, he classifies"unreliable narration"into"estranging unreliability"and"bonding unreliability."What's more, Phelan also explores unreliability in nonfictional narratives. The chapter ends with the elaboration on the conflicting and complementary relations between Phelan's rhetorical theory of unreliability and the cognitive theory of unreliability.The fifth chapter is involved with Phelan's theory of focalization. Classical narratologists blindly follow the dogmatic distinction between story and discourse, which leads them to a conclusion that only characters can play the roles of focalizers, because they dwell in the storyworld; while narrators can never be focalizers since they are in the discourseworld. By challenging those classical narratologists such as Seymour Chatman and Gerald Prince, Phelan persuasively argues why narrators can be focalizers and investigates the"dual focalization"and its relevant consequences, thus opening up new lines of focalization studies.The sixth chapter focuses on Phelan's theory of narrative judgments. Narrative judgments are a distinctive feature of Phelan's rhetorical theory of narrative. The chapter begins with a detailed effort to explicate a taxonomy of general theses about narrative judgments, together with their basic typology and working mechanisms. From Phelan's point of view, characters, narrators, implied authors, and audiences will make multi-leveled responses to the narrative, and these responses fall into three general categories: interpretive judgments, ethical judgments, and aesthetic judgments. This chapter also examines the interrelations among narrative judgments and their consequences on narrative progression, on narrativity, and on readers'experience of reading.The seventh chapter explores Phelan's theory of narrative ethics, which forms an indispensable part of his rhetorical theory of narrative. The 1990s witnessed the"ethical turn"in western literary studies. Against this background, Phelan puts forth his theory of narrative ethics. Unlike Wayne C. Booth, Martha C. Nussbaum and Adam Zachary Newton, Phelan advances that rhetorical ethics is to be conducted in an"inside out"fashion in two steps: reconstruction of the ethical principles in the storyworld, and evaluation of these ethical principles reconstructed. According to Phelan, narrative ethics is not only involved with the ethics of"the told"and the ethics of"the telling"but also involved with the ethics of"the reading,"all of which are closely related to a taxonomy of"ethical positions". The chapter also investigates the ethical effects manifested in other aspects of Phelan's rhetorical theory of narrative such as narrative progression, focalization, unreliable narration, and narrative judgments.The eighth chapter is the conclusion, which begins with a summary of the ideas discussed in the previous chapters. It concludes that narrative progression, character narrator, focalization, narrative judgments, and narrative ethics form a kernel part of Phelan's rhetorical theory of narrative. To a large extent, it is safe to argue that understanding these six issues means a mastery of the essence and nature of Phelan's rhetorical theory of narrative. A scrutiny of six kernel issues shows that Phelan's rhetorical theory of narrative boosts such salient features as dynamics, practicality, flexibility, and balance between classical narratology and postclassical narratology, and the balance between narrative poetics and narrative criticism, all of which project it as a milestone in contemporary western narrative theory.