| Ted Chiang is one of the most prominent Chinese American science fiction writers in contemporary American literature,whose works are worth of an intensive study.Basically,as a software engineer,Chiang has written for nearly 30 years,but only with quite small amounts of works.He described himself as an “occasional writer” and never writes full-length novels.However,with nearly less than 20 novelettes,Chiang has obtained almost all of the prestigious science fiction awards.Furthermore,his work was elected into Great Short Stories,which means his importance had been approved by the authority of American literature.Different from traditional science fictions,Chiang's works are bounded with deeply physical and philosophical thinking.These exciting fancies,such as the chaos and paradoxes of time and space in Story of Your Life,usually attract many readers but also confuse them.Moreover,from the perspective of narrative form,Story of Your Life is not only a typical science fiction,it also has typical characteristics of a stream-of-consciousness novel.On the other hand,chaos theory,as a brand new perspective of literary criticism at the 21 th century throughout the world,also blurs the boundary between natural science and humanities,breaking the deadlock brought by the limitation of linear thinking.Generally,chaos science brings forward a revolution of methodology and breaks the monopoly of linear thinking,which ruled the world ever since Newtonian mechanics was established.It could be put that chaos is becoming the cultural metaphor of this era.Therefore,this dissertation attempts to interpret Story of Your Life narratologically from the perspective of chaos theory,which shoots new light to the research of the work.The structure and the major contents of this paper are exhibited as shown below:Chapter One is an introduction of the author and his works,a summary of Story of Your Life,the definition of chaos theory and the purpose and innovations of thisdissertation.Chapter two makes a literature review of domestic and foreign studies of Story of Your Life,as well as of chaos theory since its relatively complexity.Chapter three will provide a review of the theoretical basis of this dissertation,especially the explanation for chaos theory,followed by some issues concerning historiographic metafiction such as Newtonian deterministic thinking,the clockwork hegemony,Laplace's Demon,nonlinear structure,strange attractor and fractal.Main characteristics of chaos including the discontinuity of chaos,the mobility of chaos and the inclusiveness of chaos are enumerated as the termination of this chapter.Chapter four is devoted to testifying for Story of Your Life under the theoretical basis of chaos theory,combining its narrative structure and narrative content together.Firstly,this dissertation forms a “hypertextual narrative” on the structural basis of a stream-of-consciousness novel and mainly studies the concept of “joint point”,giving24 detailed examples of joint points based on the three characteristics of chaos.Secondly,this dissertation forms a “dynamics of narrative” on the structural basis of a science fiction and mainly studies the concept of “strange attractor”,giving 4 detailed examples of strange attractors and discussing their philosophical connotations.Chapter five is the conclusion of this dissertation,which combines narrative structure and narrative content together from the perspective of chaos theory,with the sample of Ted Chiang's Story of Your life,integrates the formalism of traditional narrative with the formation of narrative purport of the readers,and thus forms a“hypertextual narrative” and a “dynamics of narrative” under the theoretical structure of chaos theory.Through this kind of hypertextual narrative and dynamics of narrative,it is possible for us to observe the novel as a hypertext and a dynamical system,in order to make several new discoveries of the chaotic narrative structure of the novel,with the finding of its disorderly order,which could help us to obtain the interest and charm and some concomitant thoughts of the nonlinear view of our linear world. |
PDF Full Text Request