On The Narrative Time Of Andre Brink’s The Rights Of Desire

AndréBrink (1935-) is a prestigious South African writer, literary critic and socialactivist in the contemporary era. His great work The Rights of Desire (2000) is unfoldedon the basis of the protagonist Ruben Oliver s life experience, and it probes into suchlife topics like love, evil and betrayal. By contrasting the modern woman Tessa soutrageous life, the pains that those silent and tolerant women like Antje and Magrietahave suffered are fully revealed. Besides, this novel makes an appeal for the rights thosewomen ought to have and meanwhile, it criticizes the darkness and cruelty of slavery.On the aspect of narrative method, AndréBrink partly discards the commonly usedchronological linearity. Instead, he applies to the fragmentation of narrative time,through which, he presents to readers the features of postmodern fictions: discontinuityand arbitrariness. This thesis bases its research on close reading of the text and itanalyses the narrative techniques employed in The Rights of Desire from the perspectiveof Genette s theory on narrative time. This study focuses on the arts of time order, timeduration and time frequency reflected in this novel, and then it further explores thesignificance in adopting this writing skill.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one begins with a generalintroduction to André Brink and his major literary achievements and then a briefintroduction to The Rights of Desire. In literature review, criticisms of this novel both athome and abroad are studied. Besides is an overview of the theoretical perspectivenarrative time and then follows the feasibility and significance of this study. The centralsection, including chapter two and chapter three focuses on the combination of text andtheory. These two chapters mainly study the narrative time techniques that AndréBrinkutilizes in this novel. Chapter two underscores time order of The Rights of Desire. Itstudies Brink s distinctive centripetal orientation inherited from the narrative traditionas well as the non-chronological time order that reflects his deviation from narrativetradition. Chapter three highlights narrative rhythm. It analyses the great contributionthat time duration and time frequency make to narrative rhythm. Chapter four exploresthe profound significance of André Brink s narrative time in The Rights of Desire.Chapter five is the conclusion part of this thesis. By employing artistic techniques of time inversion, temporal discontinuity and changes of time frequency, Brink regulatesand controls narrative time and story time proficiently and consequently, creating acompletely brand new form of time in his oeuvre.