A Narratological Study Of Gimple The Fool And Other Stories

Isaac Bashevis Singer won the1978Nobel Prize for Literature for his“impassioned narratives, which, with roots in a Polish-Jewish cultural tradition, bringuniversal human conditions to life”. As one of the best storytellers of the twentiethcentury, he devoted his whole life to Yiddish writing and spreading the Jewish cultureall the while. Singer had interests in the ordinary Jewish people’s lives and theirtraditions and had presented them lively in his stories. This thesis focuses on Singer’sfirst English version of the short story collection Gimple the Fool and Other Storiesand assumes that the mature narrative skills in this collection deserve much moreconcern.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One is a brief introduction toSinger’s life and works, the literature review, and the layout of this thesis. Among theeleven short stories in this collection, this thesis would take each four representativeshort stories to analyze from point of view, time and narrative space respectively. InChapter Two,“The Gentleman from Cracow”,“By the Light of Memorial Candles”,“Gimple the Fool”, and “From the Diary of One Not Born”are studied through theperspective of point of view. Evidently, Singer mainly adopts the following two kindsof narrative perspectives in this collection which are the omniscient point of view(including Editorial omniscience and Neutral omniscience) and the first-person pointof view in retrospective perspective in order to make these fascinating short storiesmore attractive and unique. Chapter Three discusses the time in “The LittleShoemakers”,“The Mirror”,“Fire”, and “The Old Man”, and tries to reveal the subtleusage of the story time by arranging the order, duration and frequency. In ChapterFour,“The Unseen”,“Joy”,“The Wife Killer”, and “Gimple the Fool”are researchedfrom the aspect of narrative space. Along with the discovery of the realistic space andthe religious space in Singer’s short stories, the identity of a Hasidim of Singer arisesand is carved in readers’mind. In the last chapter this thesis concludes with a systemicstudy of this collection from the above three aspects which achieves in presenting thetypical point of view and exploring the usage of time and narrative space in thiscollection.