An Analysis On Narrative Arts In Hemingway’s Short Stories

Ernest· Hemingway, the literary giant of the20th century, takes up a high status in the history of American literature. He is one of the writers who have the most far-reaching influence upon the later generations, thanks to his peculiar writing practices. Naturally, Hemingway’s fictions have always been attracting the attention of many readers, researchers, writers and critics. And they’ve completed lots of studies on Hemingway and gained plenty of achievements in the field of documents, writer’s biography, works analysis and works’impact. However, for quite a long time in the past, there existed a lack of study on his short stories. It is well known that the short stories make up a very important part of Hemingway’s creation. Compared with his novels, these short stories are more flexible and representative to illustrate Hemingway’s narrative arts. Hemingway’s works are popular in the world not only for a simple neat style and a strong sense of picture, but also for the unique textual form and generated measure. This paper aims mainly at deeply discussing the narrative arts (narrative structure, narrative perspective and narrative time) in Hemingway’s short stories, with a guide of the narrative theories and based on the textual analysis; and concentrates mainly on analyzing the aesthetic effects resulted from the narrative arts. In chapter one, the various narrative structures in Hemingway’s short stories are discussed, including the concise single-linear structure, the tensed ring-linear structure and the complex multi-linear structure, by means of analyzing the textual structure of the short happy life of Francis Macomber. In chapter two, the narrative perspectives in Ernest Hemingway’s short stories are discussed, including the application of out-focus, inner-focus and the combination of kinds of perspectives. In the third chapter, two aspects with regard to the narrative time are expounded:the application of the fixed-point extension of narrative time and the adoption of anachrony. In the fourth chapter, the critical part of this paper, the author focuses on the aesthetic effects of Hemingway’s narrative arts in his short stories, including:blank statement and its aesthetic effect,"iceberg theory" and the pursuit of the implicit artistic conception, as well as the application of polyphony and its aesthetic effect, etc.Through the above analysis, the paper attempts to strengthen people’s recognition to Hemingway’s writing skills and the aesthetic effects, especially in his short stories.