Postmodern Narrative Techniques In I Lock My Door Upon Myself

Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most prolific and versatile contemporary writers of the United States. She has been called a "writer's writer" and praised as "the first American novelist, man or woman since Faulkner". Her productivity has triggered negative comments among some critics who say that she has written too much to have written carefully. Besides, her works are usually seen as tracing the literary tradition of the nineteenth-century and are therefore old-fashioned.Factually, Oates's ceaseless production shows her ability as a talented and experimental writer who dares to tackle a variety of subjects and to employ a range of techniques. The novella I Lock My Door Upon Myself exemplifies Oates's excellent writing ability as well as her employment of postmodern narrative techniques. This novella was published in 1990 as the first in a series of fictions based upon works of art that the Ecco Press was planning to publish. Since its publication, the novella has received widespread praise. The novella recounts the life of the heroine from the perspective of her granddaughter. The granddaughter tells the story which is not really hers and which is often broken by the voices of the heroine and the fanning community in italicized sections. It also explores the repression and the struggle for the "self and freedom of women in the turn of the twentieth century, as well as the inherent racism of America. Therefore, critics usually study and discuss, it respectively, from the angles of the themes and the location of narrative. Actually, the narrative techniques Oates employed show the features of postmodernism. This thesis mainly analyzes three conspicuous postmodern narrative techniques and explores how the author displays and further intensifies the themes by these postmodern narrative techniques.The thesis consists of five parts, with three chapters coming between the introduction and the conclusion. These three chapters elaborately explore three...