Study On Time’s Arrow From Phelan’s Theory Of Narrative Ethics

Martin Amis, one of the most influential novelists in the contemporary literary world, has been honored as one of Three Giants in British literature, the other two being Julian Barnes (1946-) and Ian McEwan (1948-). Considering his bold innovation in writing skills, western scholars are primarily concerned with narrative techniques in his works. Meanwhile, they endow him with a great many honorary titles, such as "the newborn Flaubert","the second Joyce"(Ruan Wei,2002:48) and "the contemporary Jonathan Swift"(Wang Lili,2006:305). Since the1990s when Amis was first introduced into China, the study on Amis is still at the initial stage, limited not only in number but in interpretive perspectives. Based on previous researches, the thesis is an attempt to study ethical connotations in Time’s Arrow by employing Phelan’s theory of narrative ethics and R.D. Laing’s of the Divided Self, in order to provide a fresh perspective for Amis’s study.Phelan’s theory of narrative ethics concentrates on interactive communications among authorial construction, textual presentation and audiences’responses, especially the relationship between textual forms and ethical connotations. Despite the fact that there are some scholars who notice Amis’s ethical orientation, they are merely confined to the exploration of ethical themes. Phelan’s theory of narrative ethics is operated from the ethics of "the told", the ethics of "the telling" and the ethics of "the reading", all of which form balanced participation among the author, the text and the audiences. From Phelan’s perspective, the present study argues that Time’s Arrow is not a formal innovation alone. As a contemporary writer of ethical concern, Amis attempts to construct a specific ethical situation at the told level and display ethical reflections in reconstructive strategy engendered by specific narrative time, parody and subject at the telling level. Audiences’interactive participation also deepens its ethical reflections at the reading level, freeing themselves from traditional interpretation——Nazi crime is just an accidental sin. In short, these three levels render us break through narrative paradigms and reflect on the subtitle of The Nature of Offence.