Narrative Study On Mai Jia’s Espionage Novels

Mai Jia, a Chinese mainland writer, has attracted extensive attention since 2000, because he created a kind of distinctive espionage novels. His works not only gain the recognition of mainstream media, but also become popular in masses. Many scholars have made various research and analysis to explain why. Most of those studies focus on the creation (such as:theme, characterization, and setting), the cultural impact (such as:adaptation to movie and drama, philosophy thinking of "Code"), and the reading experience (such as:the feeling of "mystery", "bizarre", and "logical"), etc. However, the research involved in writing skills is basically rare and shallow. The majority of the related studies puts a spotlight on a single piece of works and even concludes by labeling it as "meta-fiction" or "Borges labyrinth narrative" without concrete analysis. Until now, there are only few papers studying Mai Jia’s espionage novels in a narrative point of view. But the narrative analysis of Mai Jia’s wiring skills is believed a basis for better understanding of his novels. This is just the motivation of my research in this dissertation.The dissertation uses Classical Western Narratology as a framework to do a detailed analysis of Mai Jia’s three novels-Jie Mi, An Suan, and Feng Sheng. Except for the chapter of "Introduction", which consists of research background and methodology, there are four other parts in my dissertation:Firstly, the chapter of "Research review of Mai Jia and his works" introduces Mai Jia’s personal experience and his creation. It then does a detailed literature review, explains the selection of narratives and finally presents the research significance.Secondly, the chapter of "Analysis of Mai Jia’s espionage novels in Narrative Structure" summarizes the various story plots and further explains their narrative functions.Thirdly, the chapter of "Analysis of Mai Jia’s espionage novels in Narrative Perspective" tries to study how Mai Jia applies the narrative perspectives to create specific reading experience. It reveals the functions of different perspectives and in what scenarios they will switch to the others in a story.Fourthly, the chapter of "Analysis of Mai Jia’s espionage novels in Narrative Time & Space" explores how Mai Jia deals with "rhythm" in his works and how he cleverly applies "Space" as a tool to convey his thoughts subtly and vividly in three approaches.Finally, the findings and shortcomings of the dissertation are summarized and discussed.This dissertation is my bold try to analyze a literature work by using narratology. Hopefully, this exploration can bring the readers a new view in their reading activities and help them to understand how Mai Jia creates the unique reading effects in his espionage novels.