An Analytical Approach To Narrative Fiction

Narratives are ubiquitous in our daily life. Narrative fictions are common literarypatterns in our literary reading. This dissertation tries to construct an operational analyticalframe for narrative fiction. The concrete practice is that we firstly sort out the theories ofnarratology, systemic functional linguistics, pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, functionalstylistics, literary criticism and discourse aesthetics and make an exploration to them andthen see how these theories can be applied to the analysis of narrative fiction. Based on thispractice, we construct an analytical frame.The dissertation consists of six chapters.Chapter One is a general introduction to this dissertation. It introduces the object ofthe research, methodology and significance of the research.Chapter Two is about literature review. Since in previous researches, there hasn’texisted a holistic and systematic research of narrative fiction from the perspective ofnarratology, discourse analysis, stylistics and the evaluation and appreciation of styles, thispart aims to present a bird’s-eye view of previous researches in these areas about discourseanalysis, stylistics, style and narratology which can help us to identify main approachesappropriate to construct an effective analytical frame for narrative fiction. Based on thisunderstanding, this part will mainly include a literature review of discourse analysis,stylistics, style and narratology.Chapter Three is to make an exploration on relevant theories applied in the analysis ofnarrative fiction. Although Chapter Two has offered us a panoramic literature review ofdiscourse analysis, stylistics, style and narratology, yet the construction of analytical framefor narrative fiction in this dissertation couldn’t include all these factors aforementioned.We adopt the structuralist approach in narratology, Hallidy’s systemic functional linguisticsin discourse analysis as the main theoretic tool with pragmatics and cognitive linguistic asthe supplementary tool in discourse analysis and Halliday’s functional stylistics in stylisticanalysis. Since discourse analysis is the basis of stylistic analysis; the methodological basisof stylistics is linguistics and the discourse analysis in this dissertation is based onHalliday’s systemic functional linguistics, stylistic analysis is based on Halliday’sfunctional linguistics as a matter of course. Besides, the holistic analysis of narrativefiction can’t work without the consideration of evaluation and appreciation, we also appropriately include the theories of literary criticism and discourse aesthetics. Based onthis understanding, this part mainly includes narrative analysis, systemic functionallinguistics, pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, functional stylistics, discourse aesthetics andliterary criticism, which shall offer us a theoretical foundation for Chapter Four concerningThe construction of analytical frame for narrative fiction.Chapter Four is about the construction of analytical frame for narrative fiction. Firstly,the author will discuss the contents of the narrative fiction which need analyzing. Amongall the contents, narrative techniques, narrative elements, narrative discourse, context ofnarrative fiction and dialogues in narrative fiction have been respectively discussed inChapter Three. As to coherence and mind style, the author hasn’t explored themsystematically. So, the following two sections will be set aside to analyze coherence andmind style. After these two sections, we will embark on setting up the analytical frame fornarrative fiction. This part will be again divided into three subparts. The first subpart isabout the general consideration. The second subpart is very important which deals with thedetailed discussion of three stages in the analysis of narrative fiction, that is, the first stageas description, the second stage as explanation and the third stage as evaluation. The thirdsubpart is the obtainment of the whole analytical frame for narrative fiction.Chapter Five is about the application of the analytical frame to the analysis anddiscussion of a concrete short narrative fiction Journalism in Tennessee written by MarkTwain. The aim of setting up this chapter is to combine the theory with the practice, that is,the author shall adopt the analytical frame constructed in this dissertation to make arelatively holistic analysis of this narrative fiction. This chapter consists of four subparts:warming-up activities, the description of the whole narrative fiction, the explanation of thewhole narrative fiction, and the evaluation of the whole narrative fiction. Through thepractice of applying the analytical frame to the analysis of a concrete work of narrativefiction, we can deepen the understanding of the analytical frame.Chapter Six is about major findings, limitations of this dissertation and therecommendation of future research of analytic approach to narrative fiction.