Narrative Arts Of The Needle's Eye

Margaret Drabble is a famous female novelist in Britain, yet seems to be unfamiliar to most of Chinese readers, and few materials on Drabble are available and little research has been carried out in China. Up to now, she has written 17 novels and published a variety of books of biographies, plays, commentaries and criticism; besides, she is the editor of the latest edition of The Oxford Companion to English Literature (edition 1985).The writing techniques in Drabble's novels are very peculiar. She shows respect for the realistic writing styles and applies them skillfully in her works. Besides, she combines the advantages of both the realistic and modern writing styles with her novels'natural narration, complicated but creative construction, thoughtful ending, and allegoric language. Her works are called jokingly by David Lodge as"post-realism"form, and she uses many of the techniques of realism to capture the fragmentation of contemporary society. Drabble's writing style, especially the skillful narrative techniques, help to convey her intention to demonstrate women's struggle and hard choice in modern society, thus deserving our attention and study.The essay first introduces Drabble's novels and her peculiar writing techniques to give a panorama view of this prominent female novelist and her works,and the history of naratology is reviewed as well. The first chapter touches on the symbolic writing feature of The Needle's Eye and Genette's narrative theory. The novel The Needle's Eye, published in 1972, was written during her writing transition from the first period to the second stage. In The Needle's Eye Drabble covers more scope of society and writes in profound depth in the novel which shifts from her original typical"private"novels and makes a thematic breakthrough, endowing the novel with more profound social significance. The symbolic writing techniques and narrative skills used in the novel help to achieve the art function and convey theme meanings. As for the narrative skills in the novel, Genette's theory about narratology, which is more visible and feasible, is applied as the main approach to analyze the narrative arts of The Needle's Eye. The second chapter aims to study the narrative time of The Needle's Eye. According to French narratologist Genette, there are 2 kinds of the time in fiction—"story time"and"narrative time". The relationship between story and text sequences can be described as normal sequence and"pseudo-temporal order". The proportional relationship between story-time and narrative-time leads to the problem of"duration"(pseudo-duration). The relationship of the repetitive capacities between the story and text is the problem of"frequency". Thus, narrative time of The Needle's Eye will be analyzed from three aspects: order, duration and frequency. The main attention is paid to the use of analepsis, the scene of dialogues and descriptive pause, and the repetitive frequency by the author.What the third chapter analyzes are the variable focalizations in The Needle's Eye. The term"focalization"can be utilized to indicate traditional"point of view"or"narrative perspective". The"trilogy"of focalization are zero-focalization formalized as"narrator>character"; internal-focalization formulized as"narrator =character"and external-focalization formulized as"narrator