A Study Of Gustave Flaubert’s Novels Space Narrative Turn

There are both temporal and spatial dimensions in literary works, and those are also the two important dimensions of our understanding and perception of the world. The academic studies of Gustave Flaubert based on the time dimension have mostly long been focused on realism, especially in exploring the art of the fiction style and the unique writing techniques. However, those research approaches often neglected another important dimension of novels, namely "the spatial dimension". As a writer with intense time and space perceptions, Gustave Flaubert not only describes the suddenly tragic experience of transitory and corrosion of time brought into the individual life, but also because of his own trauma experience of life—the fear of space effects, gives birth to an individual spatial perception between the thinking of individual and space. It is this unique angle of perception that shows the turning point of the original space narrative:it transcends the "typical environment" as a traditional fixed scene to use the space perspective, and it is the foundation of the spatial novels in the 20th Century. And question for this turn is the writer’s fear of space which is the consistent tread as the inner mechanism through Gustave Flaubert’s creations. Meanwhile, as a space mode of outside perception of contexts, it not only represents the spatial perception of the writer’s but also is an effective means to overcome the fear of space.This paper takes one of the novels written by Gustave Flaubert as a reference text. Basing on the intensive reading of the text, with the reference of the term of "space of fear", combining the theories of spatial narratology, writer’s creation, cultural geography, etc. reveals the inner relationship between the reasons of the narrative turn in Gustave Flaubert’s novels and the space fear internal fear of space, trying to explore the author’s the deep concern for individuals between reading the lines of the spatial narrative turn in his novels. The thesis first briefly combines the present research situation of Gustave Flaubert’s novels, and points out the important meaning of Gustave Flaubert’s novel "space narrative turn", and defines the the key concept of" fear of space". Therefore, on the basis of this analysis, this paper demonstrates its arguments from the following four chapters:The first chapter is mainly on the connotation of "space narrative turn" aiming at correcting the neglect of space in traditional narrative researches. After the correction of the relationship between time and space dimension, it points out the connotation of the "space of narrative text"—it surpasses the traditional spatial usage of "previous typical environment", having built the space foundation for the 20th Century novels. And then it puts forward the characteristics of the spatial narration in Gustave Flaubert’s novels:involving in procedure of plots, deepening the characteristics and strengthening the theme. The second chapter mainly analyzes the "internal cause of spatial narrative turn" and focuses on the analysis of the writer’s own trauma experience of fear of space. It also defines the definition of fear of space, points out its reasons as well as the characterization influenced under this trauma: the subjective examine on the relationship between "see" and "be seen" and the deployment of aesthetic, namely an oriented nihilistic telling style behind fear of space. The third chapter: the "narrative space performance mode" is the author’s reflection of the relationship between individuals and space and it is also the refraction of the concern for human’s existence. As the externalization way of expressing their inner fear of space and an effective means to overcome the fear of trauma, there are three modes of the main space performance. The first is the objective space including the dialectical physical space which includes a fixed physical space and active physical space. It is used for unfolding the story of the characters by giving the specific geographical places; the second category refers to the potential right space with material and spiritual nature constructed by the social environment and cultural atmosphere; the third category is a pure subjective complex psychological space. The fourth chapter is the usage of structural space form. For understanding the structural space form, it requires the active participation of readers. Only through the "reflect the reference" mechanism by readers, it could break the context and sequence of text, and combine the scattered phrases, fragments, statements, thoughts, etc. in the works, thus form a coherent consistent interpretation. Thus they would find the form of space structure. We adopted the three aspects of "spatial form choice", "spatial form technique" and "plot space" to study Gustave Flaubert’s novels as the apply of structural space forms.In summary, basing on the narrative space and through studying the spatial narrative turn of Gustave Flaubert’s novels, we have found that the perspectiveness and the predictability of Gustave Flaubert’s space narrative turn in the whole western literary. All the realism, naturalism or modernism writers have claimed to have his influence. It is exactly this kind of particularity, letting us see his unique status in the history of literature creation and influence on the later writers; Space fear as a traumatic experience, due to the deliberately neglect of writers, it has become a unique individual way of perception. This kind of mode of perception in creating the works, shows deep concern for the individual thinking and the spatial relationship of ontology and human nature, and thus it achieves the writer’s modernity from another angle.