The Study On The Theory Of "Narrative As Rhetoric"

"Narrative as rhetoric"means analyzing narrative from a rhetoric angle, which is a new perspective of narratology in academics. Narratology of "narrative as rhetoric" devotes to developping multiple-actor relationship among author, text and reader in the course of narrative. It is of significant academic value in narratology theory developping and empirical fiction creating.Narratology of "narrative as rhetoric" plays an important role in American modern literary criticism.Before 1990s, narratology of classic rhetoric of fiction had dominated the academic thinking, which is represented by The Rhetoric of Fiction ( WayneC Booth, 1961). However, from 1990s on post-classic narratology of "narrative as rhetoric" has gained in popularity, of which Narrative as Rhetoric (James Phelan, 1996) is the representative.This study on'narrative as rhetoric'is based on the above-mentioned two books. The author aims to probe into how "narrative" can serve as "rhetoric", and grasp the essential features of'narrative as rhetoric', namely the reciprocal and cyclical interaction among author, text and reader.It consists of five parts. The first part presents the current development in narratology. The author firstly illustrates the background of narratology of "narrative as rhetoric". To continue, the author argues that "narrative as rhetoric" results from the development of "narratology" to "narratologies", and that the development of WayneC Booth to James Phelan is in fact the result from the development of the rhetoric of fiction to the rhetoric of narrative. The first chapter includes"the concept of rhetoric","the concept of narrative","the essential characteristics of'narrative as rhetoric'"and"the significance of'narrative as rhetoric'", with the aim to affirm the significance of Phelan's theory in the respective and combining evolution of narratology and rhetoric. The second chapter discusses the relationships of principal subjects in"narrative as rhetoric", which includes the relationship of"author and reader","relator and character"and"hidden author and hidden reader", with the purpose to better illuminate the Phelan's'course'mode. The third chapter probes into the most important skills of "narrative as rhetoric", including"time","distance","visual angle","voice"and"ideology of text", simply because rhetoric skills are not negligible whenever talking about narratology. Finally, we come to the conclusion, which makes the summary of the paper, and at the same time reinforce the significance of'narrative as rhetoric'.