An Interpretation Of The Hauntins Of Hill House From The Perspective Of Greimassian Theory

Shirley Jackson is regarded as one of the most reputable American Gothic writersin modern period. The Haunting of Hill House, one of her famous writings, is praised asa typical modern gothic novel in20century, which has great influence on writers’creation ever since, such as Stephen King, etc.As a representative in French structuralism narratology, Algirdas Julien Greimashad great contributions in many aspects, such as semiotics, semantics and narratology.He divides literary analysis into two segmentations: the surface structure and the deepstructure. The surface structure refers to the narrative logic of a text, that is to say, howthe narrative in the text was processing; the deep structure refers to themes hidden in atext. The former is shown in Modèle Actantiel; the latter is reflected in Semiotic Square.The Modèle Actantiel supports a certain base on establishment of Semiotic Square.At present, enthusiasm on research of Gothic novels is still increasing in foreigncountries, while domestic studies on this topic are comparative left behind, which canbe reflected by the deficiency of the study on The Haunting of Hill House. Based onGreimassian theory, Modèle Actantiel and Semiotic Square, this thesis gives a detailedanalysis about the main characters and their behaviors to reveal the surface structure,that is to say, modèle actantiel hidden in this novel. By means of interpretation of theformer, the Semiotic Square underlay in the novel is established. The author tries todiscover the deep themes which underlie in the Semiotic Square, through theinterpretation of the Semiotic Square, in other words, the deep themes are the deep structure. Finally, it’s not difficult to find that people living in the spiritual wasteland ofmodern time are generally trapped by spiritual predicaments when facing a variety ofpressure. In order to getting rid of the dilemma, most of them adopt wrong or evenextreme ways. Only by means of the establishment of new Eden in spiritual world, theybreak away from these spiritual dilemmas.The author hopes this thesis can play a certain role in promoting domesticresearches on Shirley Jackson as well as gothic literature. Greimassian theory is notonly applied to the interpretation of Gothic novel. It also helps the interpretation ofother genres of novels, such as detective novel, etc.