Narrative Models And The Analysis Of Narrative Texts

This study discusses how to apply the western narrative models and the constructed model to analyze the narrative texts on the basis of understanding the developmental process of narratology. This thesis is divided into five parts in all. They are"introduction","a view of the development of narratology","the application of narrative models","a surface-deep model and analysis of texts"and"conclusion"respectively."Introduction"gives an introduction to the concepts"narrative"and"narratology"and introduces literature review, the theoretical background, significance, purpose and source of this study."A view of the development of narratology"discusses mainly the two developmental stages and the research contents of narratology. With regard to the developmental stages of narratology, this study compares classical narratology with post-classical narratology and recognizes that the relationship between them is not a relation of replacement, but a coexistent relation of mutual promotion and supplement. As to the research contents of narratology, this study explores mainly narrative structure and narrative discourse. In narrative structure, this study discusses the narrative features of text, story and plot. In narrative discourse, this study describes four main elements, namely time, space, focalization and narrator."The application of narrative models"introduces the definition and classification of a text, the characteristics of a narrative text and four narrative models. This study explores the components, application, advantages and disadvantages of four narrative models respectively in detail. The explored models are Labov's sociolinguistics model, Longacre's anthropology model, Thorndyke's hierarchical components model and Lewis'series model. On the basis of the introduction to the constitution of four models, this study selects a narrative text for each model respectively to make an analysis so as to illustrate each model's cognitive operation. The analysis finds that four models put the emphasis on the narrative grammar, tense, mood, voice, etc. namely the surface structure, and that they don't involve the narrative context, purpose, implication which are inferred by analysis, namely the deep semantic. So four models are appropriate for the spoken narrative analysis.On the basis of the above research, this study attempts to set up a"surface-deep model". This model is used to analyze narrative texts according to the following steps: (1) surface structural operation: abstract, stage analysis, plot inference, subject evaluation, resolution revealment and coda check; (2) deep semantic inference: textual context, purpose of organizing a text and implication inference. This model aims to analyze the surface structure and the deep semantic of a text so as to make it appropriate for both the spoken narratives and the written narratives. In order to test and verify the feasibility of the model, this study selects four narrative texts to make the analysis and find that this model can be used not only to analyze the surface structure and the deep semantic of narrative texts, but also to generate or construct stories, which is helpful to teachers'effective teaching of textual reading and writing."Conclusion"makes a general summary of the whole thesis, points out the validity of this study in the reading and writing of narrative texts, proposes the limitations of the current study and the future efforts.