The New Form In The Golden Notebook

This thesis analyzes Doris Lessing's daring innovation in the narrative form of The Golden Notebook—the dual-thread structure and the juxtaposition of the traditional and postmodernist literature, which presents the author's literary view, her pursuit of truth in literature, from the perspective of narrative structure and thread, by studying the metafictional techniques that Lessing employs.The first chapter gives a general introduction to the author and the layout of The Golden Notebook, as well as the outline and the purpose of the thesis, and then takes a look at the literary review on it home and abroad and the metafiction theory. The second and third chapters expound the dual-thread structure of The Golden Notebook. The former examines the story thread of the narrative structure of Free Women to prove the inadequacy of traditional literature. The latter analyzes the psychology thread of the notebooks and its effect, to show the effectiveness of the postmodernist literature in reflecting the truth of the life of the heroine. In addition, how the effectiveness is realized in the notebook by the metafictional techniques is also discussed in the third chapter. The fourth chapter expounds how the two sections of Free Women and the notebooks are fused together by means of the dual-thread structure to become an organic unity—The Golden Notebook. The unity symbolizes the theme of the novel from chaos to wholeness, which is also the truth Lessing pursues beneath the fragmentation in the society and the individual psyche.