Polyphonic Features In Small World

As a contemporary British noted novelist even world famous essayist, DavidRocky presents a series of masterpieces in front of the people in the world with hisexclusive writing style, which includes prestigious “campus Trilogy”, namely ChangingPlaces, Small World and Nice Work. Small World is not only a comic satirical novel, butalso a polyphonic novel. The author of the thesis adopts the polyphonic theory ofBakhtin’s who is the famous literary theorist and critic of the former Soviet Union, toanalyze the polyphonic features of Small World.Small World is a typical polyphonic novel. Its significance lies in the independentconsciousness in different world to develop the story and contrast the fate of thecharacters, value concept and social status with the purpose to analyze and contrast thecharacters and their consciousness in different level. It emphasizes the relation ofdialogues in text, which means a independent and opposite relation of dialogues existingbetween the author and the characters, as well as among the characters. Meanwhile, it isalso a coexisting unity of diversity of consensus. In fact, this relation is an equaldialogue of variety of voices. Therefore, the polyphonic novel has the features ofcontradiction, dialogue, openness and infiniteness. Polyphonic novels inspire people tolearn lessons from different life experience and human nature of different character indifferent space, which are different from the traditional “spoon-fed” writing. Readers nolonger passively accept, but have their own ability to discern and think.There are four chapters in this thesis. Introduction mainly introduces DavidRocky’s biography and domestic and foreign scholars’ research and analysis on theworks of David Rocky’s, as well as domestic and foreign scholars’ research on SmallWorld and the arguments that the thesis adopts.Chapter One provides a theoretical support for the analysis of the polyphonicfeatures. First, it introduces the concept of polyphonic novels. Then it introduces thefamous theory of Bakhtin’s. On the basis of her theory, the thesis analyzes the featuresof chronotopic theory, dialogicity and carnival theory. It also illustrates this greatpolyphonic theory in details through the perspective of invalidation, paralogy, conversion, and juxtaposition, and the perspective of body, form and spirit, and thinkingperspective, transformation and subversion to tradition and authority.Chapter Two is the key part of the thesis. The author takes a detailed text analysistext analysis by using the chronotopic theory, dialogicity and carnival theoryrespectively. The first section mainly introduces the contrast of different spacebackground, the contrast of academic world and the industrial civilization, as well as thecontrast of life montage and character portraits in multi-space. The second sectionsearches for different dialogue relation in the text on the basis of pluralistic dialoguetheory. The thesis argues from binary oppositions and comedic performance to narrativestructure and dialogue of style, finally to cultural dialogue and pluralistic strategy. Thethesis also argues the comic expression in the text from theme, character and situation;argues the complex dialogue relation between characters and the narrative structurefrom the aspects of the ending, structure and style; analyzes the cultural dialogue in thetext in multiple perspectives. The third section mainly introduces the carnival keynote inthe text, analyzing the carnival features in the text from perspective of parody, irony andcoincidence.The Conclusion summarizes the contents of each chapter in this thesis, andsummarized David Rocky’s special writing style in Small World which combinestraditional writing method with realistic writing approach so as to prove again theexclusive charm of this polyphonic novel. This thesis consists of these four chapters,which take an all-round systematic analysis to the outstanding polyphonic novel withBakhtin’s polyphonic theory.