Study On The Narrative Rhetoric Of The New-generation Novels

Narrative and rhetoric are inseparable.As for Chinese new-generation novels since the 1990s,their rich and various narrative rhetorical strategies and techniques not only help readers penetrate into the meaning and connotation of texts,but also express the life experiences of new-generation authors,providing readers a reference regarding the outlook on life and values.All of these have formed the rhetorical relations among the author,narrator,character,and reader,thus gaining unique text-reading effects.In this sense,narrative is a form of rhetoric with strong artistic appeal,which fills the aesthetic space of the novels with elasticity and tension.Most contemporary scholars merely study new-generation novels either from the perspective of narrative or rhetoric,but seldom study them within the theoretical framework of "narrative as a form of rhetoric",which leaves room for interpretation and analysis of new-generation novels from the perspective of narrative rhetoric in this article.Based on the rhetorical theories of narrative of Wayne C.Booth and James Phelan as well as the relevant contemporary theories in narratology and rhetoric,this article investigates new-generation novels from the following five aspects:narrative perspective,narrative voice,narrative time,narrative space,and narrative techniques.Through studies,the author finds that in new-generation novels,the choice of narrative perspective often suggests a certain tendentiousness and achieves more effective narrative rhetorical effects through increasingly maturing shifts of perspective.And these novels convey different narrative rhetorical meanings through public,absent,or hidden narrative voices.This article also analyzes the narrative time of new-generation novels from three aspects including the temporal succession,temporal duration,and temporal frequency,thereby interpreting the rhetorical intention of narrative time.In new-generation novels,the space is one way to facilitate narrative process as well as an indispensable scene in narration.Therefore,this article discusses the construction of narrative space in new-generation novels and its important nanative rhetorical function.The final part of this article introduces four narrative rhetorical techniques which are,relatively speaking,frequently and noticeably used in new-generation novels:exposure,absurdity,collage,and irony.Through a concrete analysis of the narrative rhetorical strategies adopted by new-generation authors and an interpretation of their narrative rhetorical intentions,this article attempts to help readers have a better understanding of the inwardness of textual narration,while providing a new angle on the study of new-generation novels.