On The Spatial Narrative In Absalom,Absalom!

William Faulkner,known as an outstanding American Southern epic writer,is also recognized as the most significant American experimental novelist in the 20^th century.With the deepening and complexity of research in recent years,more and more literary critics have come to consider Absalom,Absalom!as his most outstanding work,which not only contains almost all the themes of Faulkner's novels,but also is considered as the“paradigm”of modern fiction in terms of its artistic forms.As Faulkner's representative work,Absalom,Absalom!has long drawn the attention of critics of English&American literature,and the profundity and depth of theme and complicatedness of its art form have constantly been explored and studied by numerous literary critics.Since its publication,critics have studied the novel from Feminist,Archetypal,New Historicism and many other perspectives.This thesis attempts to carry out a tentative analysis of Absalom,Absalom!from a new aspect,i.e.,spatial narrative.Since the 20^th century,the trend of temporal dimension in narratology has turned into a trend of spatial dimension,and spatial issues in novels have gained more and more attention.Spatial Narrative was initiated into literary criticism by Joseph Frank in his essay“Spatial Form in Modern Literature”in 1945.In this essay,Joseph Frank explores the functions of space in fiction,and puts forward the important concept of“spatial form”.Besides,Gabriel Zoran also offers a highly valuable model of the structuring of space.Based on theories of Joseph Frank and Gabriel Zoran,this thesis gives its main concern on the topographical space,the chronotopic space and the textual space to demonstrate the narrative functions of space and how they contribute to the thematic construction.The spatial construction in this thesis falls into three aspects:an exploration of the spiritual crisis of Southerners on the topographical level;a display of the intense and intertwining synchronic and diachronic relationships on the chronotopic level;an examination of the spatial form achieved by“juxtaposition”on the textual level.Absalom,Absalom!shows its spatial significance owing to its designated setting of places and exquisite spatial depiction techniques,through which space pushes forward the narrative as a crucial structural element.As for the spatial construction in Absalom,Absalom!,firstly,the thesis analyzes the topographic space,which not only serves as a spatial setting highlighting both communal and individual crisis of Southerners,but also participates in and pushes forward the narration.Next,the thesis examines the spatial construction of chronotopic space,finding that there is a display of both the character's motions and its determinant powers diachronically and the intense and intertwining relationship among characters synchronically,revealing and representing the living predicament of the Southerners.Finally,the thesis explores the narrative techniques employed by Faulkner in the novel to achieve the spatial form,such as the“juxtaposition”of narrative perspectives and plots,the former of which adds to the uncertainty and subjectivity of characters due to the self-contradictory narrations,while the latter leads the characters nowhere but“nihility”.Through the interpretation of the spatial construction in the novel,this thesis concludes that Absalom,Absalom!is a novel endowed with spatial form,the effect of which is achieved not only through a steady display of the crucial spatial setting--Yoknapatawpha county designated by Faulkner,but also through a dynamic construction of theme in three dimensions of space,thus bringing out its theme finally:the Southerners may have a wish to transcend time,however,their single pursuit of fragment of space while ignoring the existence of time is doomed to frustration and destruction.