On Narrative Techniques Of Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair is the representative work of William Makepeace Thackeray. It is published during 1847 and 1848. Vanity Fair is a metaphor to reveal the dark side and morally criticize the British society. After its publication, many scholars have researched on this book comprehensively. However, most of them focused on the analysis of the context. And few scholars have analyzed its narrative techniques.This thesis is to analyze the writing style, techniques and their functions through the perspective of narratology. One of the impressive parts of Vanity Fair is its narrative techniques. This paper aims at research on the narrative strategy, its structure, and language to better understand this book. In this way, people can comprehensively understand the characters, plot, and the theme.The first chapter discusses the narrative point of view in Vanity Fair. The first section introduces double narration. Shifting point of view, especially the shifting between Amelia and Rebecca, gives Vanity Fair objectiveness. People can see different characters according to what they see and what they say through different points of view. The second section makes a research on the intrusive narrator and its contribution to the fiction. Chapter two is on the narrative structure. After the. illustration of theoretical basis about narrative structure, the first section introduces the parallel narrative structure while the second section introduces the contrasting narrative structure. Chapter three concentrates on the narrative language. The first section analyzes the similes and metaphors in Vanity Fair as a whole. The second section focuses on the ironies. In the part of conclusion, it concludes the whole thesis and restates its man idea, clear out its aim and points out the importance of narrative techniques in Vanity Fair.