A Narrative Semiotic Analysis Of Beloved

Beloved is one of the most striking novels by Toni Morrison.It tells the story about a black woman named Sethe.Sethe has to kill her daughter Beloved who comes back for revenge against the background of slavery.Since published,this novel has been attracted by a large number of scholars who set off a wave of research.These studies focus on the themes of accusing evil slavery,praising maternal love and awakening of subjectivity from the perspectives of magic realism,postmodernism and ecofeminism,etc.According to Greimas' s narrative semiotics,all kinds of literary narrative works have a set of “narrative grammar”,which includes three structures,namely,the structure of manifestation,the surface structure and deep structure.Based on Greimas' s narrative semiotics,this study applies the qualitative method to analyze the three structures of Beloved respectively at the discursive level,the narrative level and the thematic level to explore the following questions:(1)How are the three protagonists in Beloved characterized at the discursive level?(2)How are the three important events in Beloved constructed at the narrative level?(3)How are the themes of Beloved expressed at the thematic level?The following major conclusions can be drawn in this study.First,at the discursive level in Beloved,on the one hand,there is a one-to-one correspondence between the signifier and the signified,on the other hand,different signifiers correspond to a specific signified.The images of the three protagonists Sethe,Beloved and Denver are characterized based on two kinds of relationships above between the signifier and signified.Second,at the narrative level,the three main events in Beloved are well constructed based on Greimas' s actantial narrative schema and canonical narrative schema.Third,at the thematic level,the two themes of Beloved are disclosed based on Greimas' s semiotic square.It is an innovative attempt to interpret Beloved based on Greimas' s narrative semiotics.Besides,Greimas' s narrative semiotics is usually used as the theoretical bases to analyze short stories with traditional narrative.It is another innovative point to apply Greimas' s theory to analyze Beloved,a novel with nonlinear and complex narrative.This study not only enriches the present researches on Beloved,but also expands the fields of application of Greimas' s narrative semiotics.