Linguistic Representation Of Spatial Narrative Mode In Absalom,Absalom!

Until “Spatial Turn” firstly appeared in the field of criticism in late 20 th century,narrative theory began to turn its direction to spatial issues,and spatial narrative has been an important means to organize literary language since then.Narrative media are diverse.It should be accepted that the importance of media is self-evident,but there is no denying that language is still the dominating,the best and the most applicable narrative medium as well.Therefore,for the language in literary works,that how to analyze it from the perspective of spatial narrative is a significant problem linguistic representative study has to solve.Absalom,Absalom!,acclaimed as the pinnacle of William Faulkner,an American novelist,applies the obscure language,the multilevel spatial structure and the rich implication to the extreme,but in literary world,sufficient and in-depth research is greatly lacking on the representation of its spatial language.The linguistic representation of spatial narrative mode cannot be separated from the multilevel narrative structure,the shifting narrative perspective and metaphorical scenic combination,and so on,all of which are fully demonstrated in Absalom.First of all,this paper makes a deep analysis on Spatial Narrative Theory,and classifies it into three components: spatial narrative environment,spatial narrative structure and spatial narrative perspective,while the language expression characteristic of spatial orientation is through the whole theoretical system.Linguistic expression serves the spatial narrative mode;in turn,the spatial narrative way integrates language from spatial metaphor and System-Functional Grammar.Secondly,it can be found that a great deal of linguistic expression in Absalom! can be classified into three aspects:environment,structure and perspective;and by sorting out the linguistic images expressing spatial relations,a mapping relationship between spatial narrative theory and linguistic expression is established.The paper summarizes three characteristics of the language narrative,namely,multiple narrative perspective,metaphorical narrativescenes and cross-style narrative structure.Finally,based on the three“meta-functions”-ideational function,interpersonal function and discourse function put forward in System-Functional Grammar,this paper comes up with representational function and interactive function.As the spatial narrative style Absalom is mainly dealt with through character discourse and metaphorical expressions,System-Functional Grammar theoretically guides language on how to achieve representation,while the rich linguistic expressions in Absalom,Absalom! provide a solid corpus support for spatial narrative theory.After a systematic study of the narrative layer and linguistic layer of the novel,we can get to this statement: the study of spatial narrative mode concerning literary works can integrate Spatial Narrative Theory,Systemic-Functional Grammar and also the theory of linguistic representation.Spatial Narrative Theory builds a macroscopical theoretical framework for the whole narrative mode;Systemic-Functional Grammar acts as a linguistic basis for research,on which we discuss how and to what extent the representative and interactive function of language coincide with the characteristics of linguistic representation,providing more informative linguistic support for the research on spatial narrative mode;and the ways of linguistic representation contribute to the expressive medium of spatial narrative theory.Whether on the level of narrative perspective,of narrative structure or on the level of narrative language,Absalom,Absalom! presents a rich level of spatial narrative,which corroborates the applied breadth and depth of this theory and also offers new research fields and subjects for linguistic study.