On The Characteristics Of The Narrative Person And Narrative Viewpoint Of Murakami’s Literature From The Perspective Of Narratology

Murakami Haruki (1949-) is one of the most powerful and influential writers in modern Japanese literature. His literary works attracts a large number of audience both at home and abroad. Deeply influenced by European and American writers, his works are not so somber-toned and gloomy as other postwar works in Japan. During his literary career, Murakami has been nominated the Nobel Prize for many times. And in the late1990’s, he was awarded Jerusalem Prize which is considered as the stepping stone to the Nobel Prize in literature.Compared with his early works, Murakami’s writing style changes substantially in the21st century. He began to change his narrative person from the perspective of first person to third person since the late1990’s. Nowadays, in literary circle throughout the world, there are few articles focusing on the narrative person and narrative viewpoint of Murakami’s literature. So narratology-oriented research is a quite new perspective and of great significance. By systematical and creative analysis of A Wild Sheep Chase and After Dark, the author hopes to make contributions to the research on Murakami’s literature and shed some light on the following researches and enrich the research methodology of Murakami’s literature in China. This thesis includes three chapters.Chapter one concerns about the foundation theory of this thesis-----the Narratology theory of Gerard Genette, which occupies an important place in this theoretical system. The author analyzes the possibility and feasibility of applying the theory of narrative person and narrative viewpoint on the research of Murakami’s literature.Chapter two introduces the characteristics and function of narrative person in Murakami’s literary works. By systematical analysis of A Wild Sheep Chase and After Dark from the perspective of Gerard Genette’s Narratology theory, the author concludes the narrative characteristics and main thoughts of Murakami. At the same time, the author compares the similarities and differences of character description from different perspectives of narrative person.Chapter three focuses on the characteristics and function of narrative viewpoint in Murakami haruki’s literary works. This chapter discusses the features, function, similarities and differences of narrative viewpoint in A Wild Sheep Chase and After Dark by using Gerard Genette’s Narratology theory.In conclusion, this thesis analyzes the narrative person and viewpoint of Murakami Haruki’s two masterpiece and researches the changes of Murakami’s works from the early period to the21st century. The author hopes this research can be an important step in the study of literature and intends to make contributions to the application of Narratology theory on Murakami Haruki’s works in Japanese critics.