Western Novel Space Symbols Function Research

Time and space are the two elements indispensible to any novel. The space as a formal construct in the novelistic text is of course composed of linguistic symbols, with particular linguistic properties and artistic functions. In China, most narratologists in the foreign literature circle have long since been paying much attention to the time aspect of the Western novels, while considerably ignoring its spatial semiotic expressions and functions. To make a thorough investigation into the Western novelistic world, however, a systematic study on its spatiality as shown on its linguistic, semantic and thematic aspects is quite needed.This dissertation is designed to expound that spatiality is the operative secondary illusion in the novelistic text. Spatial secondary illusion means the exercise of spatial elements to realize, extend and develop the essential temporal nature of the novel. There are three kinds of spatiality in the novelistic secondary illusion. The first is the geometric, concerning Euclidean spatial elements such as "point"(e.g. characters as point of view, particular plot, representative words, themes etc.),"line"(e.g. the ficelle, the enfilage, etc.),"plane"(e.g. superimposed planes,"palimpsest","spiral" structure, etc.). The relationship between the novel and the spatial arts such as painting, sculpture and architecture composes the second kind of the spatial function, the virtual. The relation of scene to pictorial encadrement, the connection of characterization to sculptural volume, and the clear nexus of novelistic structure to architectural functional form all reveal an extensive range of alternatives within virtual spatiality. Lastly, the novel can produce a genidentic field to make both its textual generation and its textual interpretation possible.This dissertation will first locate the development of the idea of spatial secondary illusion in the temporal art of the novel in the context of artistic, philosophic, and literary theory, beginning with the most prominent ancient and modern concepts of space and making a survey of the sources and the current situation of the research. Then mainly guided by the semiotic theories of Genette, Todorov, Tynianov, Tomashevsky, Shklovsky and Langer, and the novelistic theories of James, Butor and Frank, a detailed analysis on the three core functions of spatiality will be made with illustrations of some representative texts. The applicability of spatiality and its importance to both the creation and the interpretation of the novelistic text will in the end be reiterated.