Rhetorical Narrative In A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man

Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a transitional masterpiece of the fiction of stream of consciousness. It actually is a portrait of the author himself as it is constructed into a Bildungsroman based on Joyce's life experiences. He employs innovative narrative strategies in characterizing the protagonist, Stephen's growth. However, present studies of Portrait tend to be a mechanical investigation into Joyce's narrative strategies, because the critics mostly apply classical narratological methods which analyze the text only, separating the novel from society, history, and even cultural context. Thus, this thesis aims at making an all-round study of the narrative of Portrait by applying Phelan's rhetorical theory of narrative.Narrative in this thesis is defined as someone on some occasion for some purpose tells another person that something happened. It involves a dynamic progression of characters, events, narration, as well as the audiences'response. Based on it, this thesis is to analyze the rhetorical narrative in Portrait, to illustrate the rhetoric of the three-dimensional character, four-dimensional audience, and the progression of instabilities and tensions.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One briefly introduces Joyce and Portrait, reviews the current studies of Portrait, particularly those concerning the narrative of it, and shows the aims and structure of this thesis. Chapter Two makes a comparison between Phelan's theory and previous classical narratologies, and approves of its feasibility in an all-round narrative study of Portrait. Chapter Three scrutinizes Joyce's innovative strategies in Portrait, namely, spiral narrative structure, third-person internal focalization, and narrative voice changing from null to infinite strength, and duration and order. Chapter Four, based on the statements of Chapter Three, discusses in detail how the narrative embodies the mimetic, synthetic, and thematic characters, the responses from narrative audience, authorial audience, and flesh-and-blood audience, and a dynamic progression caused by various instabilities and tensions. Chapter Five summarizes the significance and limitation of this study.Through this study, the thesis finally concludes that Joyce, with reasonable arrangement of narrative strategies, naturally constructs a stage where dynamic interactions happen between characters, the narrator, audiences, and the (implied) author. Besides, the approach of rhetorical narrative study helps audience better understand the novel and also sets an example for them to appreciate Joyce's other masterpieces...