Original Story,Arranged Story And Narrative Discourse

While learning from western countries the great achievements in narratology,this dissertation is aimed at exploring and establishing a set of fundamental concepts that would fit and specify the narrative tradition and practice in China. After a close study on China's narrative tradition and practice,this dissertation puts forward three basic definitions in narrative terms to demarcate the three different levels out of which a narrative text was born. These three definitions are "original story","arranged story" and "narrative discourse". This dissertation analyses in detail the differences and relations between the three terms and explores in particular the possibilities where the "arranged story" could coincide with the "narrative discourse". Therefore,the dissertation coordinates,to a certain extent,the contradictory opinions between one-"story and discourse can be coincided" and the other-"pre-narrated text cannot turn into narrated text without any transformation",which are proposed by Shen Dan and Zhao Yiheng respectively. Consequently,this dissertation concludes that the three above-mentioned terms can be a help to construct the developing narrative theory system in China.