Humanitarian Concern

As one of the greatest realistic British authors in the19th century, CharlesDickens and his works have been studied from different perspectives by manyscholars at home and abroad. The thesis applies narratology to study Dickens’masterpiece Great Expectations, especially to extract and sum up the typical narrativespace in Great Expectations. In this way, the narrative spaces in Great Expectationscan be divided into the story aspect and the non-story aspect. The spaces in the storyaspect can be classified into social space (Joe Gargery’s home, Pocket’s home, Mr.Jaggers’ office, Pip’s own flat) and mysterious space (Satis House, Walworth Castle).The non-story aspect is namely psychological space. The thesis starts with thecomposition of the narrative spaces to analyze how these three kinds of narrativespaces develop. Through analyzing all these expressing methods and narrativetechniques in different spaces, the thesis elaborates the function of different spaces inthe text. In addition, through analyzing how these spaces are put in order, the thesisfurther discusses the subtle relationships between them and their implications. Besides,through analyzing the way of space arrangement, this thesis reveals the connotation ofthe works and expounds Dickens’ value of humanitarianism...