A Study Of Narrative Art In The Age Of Innocence

Edith Wharton is one of the best contemporary American woman writers. As a realismwriter, Wharton has a thorough understanding of human nature. She has keen insight on theold New York tradition. She deeply and carefully depicted all the aspects of upper society in"Old New York", reflecting irreconcilable contradiction between the individual and society,inevitable conflict between the new and old age alternation.She is the first woman writer awarded the Pulitzer Prize for literature in1921due to hergreat contributions in the literary field. The former criticism on The Age of Innocence werefrom the feminism, morality, psychology, attitude towards marriage, art features, similaritiesand differences with the works of Henry James. But there are less systematic or in-depthcriticisms on narrative art. Therefore this thesis makes up the insufficiency of this fieldthrough discussing narrative art of The Age of Innocence and researching into how narrativeart serves for the theme and strengthens the artistic value of the novel.This thesis adopts the technique of text analysis from the narrative perspective. Itexplores the narrative features via three aspects of narrative focalization, narrative time andnarrative sound. This thesis also explores the role of narrative art in the expression of thetheme and the artistic value of the novel. The narrative focalization includes internalfocalization, zero focalization and external focalization, the novel adopted internalfocalization mainly accompanied by the appropriate full focalization and external focalizationnarrative mode. Uniting the content and form perfectly Wharton portrayed the charactersbetter and deepen the theme. Narrative duration of narrative time contains omission,lengthening and pause. During the narration Wharton used omission many times to leave ablank for the story and made the readers fill in the blank by their different understanding sothat it can achieve the unexpected effect. Chapter Three discuss free indirect discourse andnarrative sound namely authorial narrative sound. This thesis explores the “Free IndirectDiscourse” of the text and its ironic effect. The text was with the help of "author" of "authorialnarrative voice" in which has the authority to present the idea, comment and to express the criticism and satire of the New York society. The above mentioned narrative strategies exertpivotal influence on theme expression and intensifying, in which adds the artistic value to thenovel. This thesis contains some innovation points in narrative feature of this work.