Postmodernist Narrative Arts In Daniel Martin

Many postmodern writers try to experiment with some innovative narrative techniques. which are rather different from the traditional ones, to reflect their ideas on reality. John Robert Fowles, one of England’s famous writers, is such an innovative man. This thesis chooses Fowles’s novel-Daniel Martin as the research object and analyzes the unique postmodernist narrative techniques in this novel, which mainly includes non-linear narrative, intertextuality and open ending. And at the same time it explores the important art value of these postmodernist narrative techniques and Fowles’s great concern about literature itself.This thesis consists of three chapters besides the introduction and the conclusion.The introduction includes a brief introduction to John Fowles and his work Daniel Martin. Then the thesis gives the literature review on Daniel Martin. The last section of the introduction is an overview of the theory of postmodernism and the theoretical framework of this thesis.The first chapter explores the non-linear narrative technique in Daniel Martin, in which focuses on the theory of narrator and narrative points of view, non-linear narrative time which mainly expounds on fragments and constant shifting of tenses in Daniel Martin.The second chapter begins with the elaboration of the concept of intertextuality. Then it further explores the intertextual conditions of Daniel Martin with Fowles’s other works, which again proves the nature and meaning of intertextuality in the literary works. In this sense, intertextuality makes a breakthrough of the traditional literary criticism and significantly widens its horizon in reading and interpretation.The third chapter focuses on the open ending, which is another important narrative technique of postmodernism. This chapter compares the traditional closed ending with the postmodernist open ending and then expounds on the circular open ending of Daniel Martin. Then it points out that the open ending reflects the postmodernist works’respect towards pluralism.The conclusion further elaborates the significance of postmodernist narrative strategies for Daniel Martin. These special postmodernist strategies employed by Fowles acquire the reader to participate in the reconstruction and rearrangement of the story in reading, which changes the traditional role of the reader.