Space Narrative Studies On The Lord Of The Rings

As one excellent epic fantasy no vel,the Lord of the Rings created by J.R.R.Tolkien marks the beginning of a new type of fiction.In recent years,the studies on the Lord of the Rings have been developing on a certain scale in China and showed a further developing trend in terms of diversity and depth.However,most narrative studies on the Lord of the Rings are still resting on discussing Frye’s "U-shaped" narrative structure,which is short of the thoughts on novels’space narrative.With the help of space narrative theories,"space" is used as an opening for breaking through at the systematic studies on the enormous space built in the Lord of the Rings,expecting to exploit some new study perspectives for the Lord of the Rings series.This paper is composed of three sections including introduction,main body and conclusion.In the section of introduction,the studies on the Lord of the Rings and the development of space narratology,both in China and abroad are briefly described as well as the life story of its author.Besides,the framework of this paper is also presented in this part.The main body of this paper is made up of three parts.The first part is,in a straight way,to elaborate the different narrative functions of the various spaces that Tolkien shaped in writing:on one hand,the spaces from being separated to being united are discussed based on Element "door" of space.Charles,as a place where the story began and ended,is the "holy space" in the hearts of leading characters;on the other hand,"Middle-earth" created in the novel is not only used as a geographic scene,but also a temporal reference to arrange plots and advance the narration for the novel.Starting from the outer text dimension,the second part is to deeply analyze the narrative viewpoint and the structural "space" features in the Lord of the Rings.The great number of narrators generates a roaring multi-space effect with various voices in the novel.Besides,the narration in the novel is generally characterized by the scattering perspective because of the different viewing angle of each narrator.Additionally,the stagger progress between primary and secondary clues forms a "Chinese-boxes" space narrative structure and iterative narrative style.With the previous part of this paper,the effect of textual space,which means the space narrative techniques behind words,is systematically analyzed from both inner and outer dimensions.Based on the "good disaster" theory proposed by Tolkien,the third section is created to analyze the sense of order pursued under the cover of space narrative in the novel.The space presented in the Lord of the Rings quite far away from the real world,which exactly indicates the deep concern over the reality with an expectation of getting back to a charming world from the outside of time and space;based on "charm regain",the novel is successfully find the textual "’order" rooting in traditional literature.With the help of rebuilding the hero image and the deep understanding of Christian"eschatology",Tolkien finally constructed a huge and magnificent "Middle Earth" in text,which realized his expectation and pursuit of "order" restoration.