The Pursuit Of A Unique Artistic World

Since ancient times, attentions have been paid to the concept of time and space by many thinkers and philosophers. With the development of era, the field of literature has witnessed its entrance and many critics' interpretations. Time and space art is an indispensable factor for novel creation, the extent of the skillful use of which directly influences the quality and vitality of novels. One has his or her own distinct understanding and interpretation of time and space art, thus, every work has its own unique world created by the artist.In The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing has built up a full three-dimensional structure of a house style, thus providing a great platform for researches on time and space art. Its topic story "Free Women" serves as a pillar in support of the whole structure of the novel. The four different notebooks of black, red, yellow, and blue colour, act as four pillars of a house propping up the house, with their respective contents and forms. The last golden one plays the role of a roof, which supplies an underlying foundation for the sublimation of four notebooks in content.This thesis is composed of six chapters, with four chapters set between the introduction and the conclusion. Based on literature review and relevant theory, it attempts to disclose the unique charm of the time-space art in this novel through the interpretation of the time, space, and psychological space-time perspective.Chapter one is the introduction, in which Doris Lessing's literary creation process and background of The Golden Notebook are briefly introduced.Chapter two presents a literature review which includes respective studies of both time and space art and The Golden Notebook at home and abroad. The majority tends to be concentrated on the theme of women and religious ethics, and it is hard to see systematic analysis of the time and space art of the novel. The theory framework introduces various relevant theories of time art and space art. And an interpretation from this viewpoint can better disclose the artistic world constructed by Doris Lessing, and further enrich studies of this novel.Chapter three puts analysis on the time art. Judging from time clues, the singleline-mode chronological time order of "Free Women" constitutes the longitude line of time; while four notebooks deal with time in a more complicated way, resembling latitude lines to weave into a complex network together with the longitude line. And the time structure of the whole novel switching back and forth between the narrative space formed by two different time systems appears to be a pendulum swinging to and fro between reality's and the text's fictional space.Chapter four mostly discusses the space ait. In The Golden Notebook, two modes of space form can be found with artistic senility. One is the linear organization of traditional realism, in which space is displayed in a simple, straightforward way, seeming flat and concentrated; another is the juxtapositional arrangement of modern style, in which the space is dispersive and dimensional. The former is reflected in "Free Women", and the latter in four "notebooks". In addition, the author often gives spaces personified spiritual characteristics and connects them with the character's mood and personality, reflecting characters' spiritual state and time atmosphere.Chapter five mainly studies psychological space-time art. Physic space-time is relatively closed and unified in "Free Women". Psychological space-time is reflected in four "notebooks" that own independent narrative means and themes, but all have the same narrative clue, that is, Anna's psychological process from depression to breakdown. The psychological thread jumps with the changes of time and space. Meanwhile, the author also depicts characters'irrational consciousness underneath the state of dream and meditation. These vague, obscure, abstract but vivid mental pictures convey the heroine's rich experiences and complex, heavy and contradictory psychological consciousness.Chapter six is the conclusion. It summarizes the main contents of the first five chapters and finds that The Golden Notebook is a highly unified artistic work, in which Lessing has constructed a unique space-time art world through the staggered and innovative use of various artistic skills in the complex layout structure, and the relationship underneath the deep structure of the text. Afterwards, it points out the significance and limitation of this research. As a result of the author's shortage of knowledge and materials, the research is still not comprehensive and systematic and needs further study.