Manipulation On Biblical Narrative Techniques By Authorial Intention

Biblical narrative criticism experienced the evolution from structuralistic narratology which at first focused on the "closed" text to the period of postclassical narratologies which paid attention to the context of social history and culture.In the face of the booming theories,biblical critics timely pointed out that the Bible could not be interpreted at will,and the criticism of any theory should be based on the text itself.The writer of this paper believes that text is the means for the author to express his intention,and deep analysis of this means can remove the veil of the authorial intention so as to understand the text properly.Therefore,in this paper,how authorial intention controls the biblical narrative techniques is scrutinized by the method of classical narrative text analysis.And it is demonstrated from three aspects:narrator,characterization and repetition.The first chapter of the present paper analyzes how biblical authors manipulate readers by the choice of the type of narrator.Except for several individual cases,biblical narrators are third person narrators who narrate in an o'bjective and calm way,which provides reliability to the text.The authors also choose an omniscient perspective,so that readers can observe the hidden things.The inner emotions and attitude of God told by an omniscient narrator work extremely well in transmitting the authorial intention.In addition,the narrators sometimes intervene overtly by direct comments on characters or events,a specific time adverbial and explanation to a fact.Other times,narrators intervene covertly by evaluative words,designations,and actions that show character's belief condition.With these techniques,readers' value and judgment coincide with the authorial intention consequently.The second chapter focuses on how the authorial intention is conveyed through the characterization from two aspects:flat characters and round characters.Biblical authors like to outline the characters in a simple and direct way.And in shaping the personality of these flat characters,they adopt a binary opposition mode so that the values input effectively through its contrastive effect.Although these characters have a one-fold personality,they are impressive because of the author's superb narrative techniques.Biblical authors use the discourse to reveal character's inner motives and thoughts,and from those cleverly designed dialogues,we can discover how the authors control the readers.Even for round characters,the Bible gives concise appearance and psychological descriptions.Instead of depicting the character,the functional purpose of the few rare detailed descriptions of appearance is more obvious.The psychological descriptions of the round characters in biblical narrative are mostly in the form of direct quotations spoken by the characters,which makes the author's intervention imperceptible.Besides,biblical authors express their likes and dislikes and judgments by the words of behavior and actions which are seemingly without any emotion.In fact,the connotation and arrangement of these actions are the skills of the authors to show their attitude.In the last chapter,four kinds of repetition in biblical narrative are discussed in detail.There is a fixed pattern in the fate of the biblical characters:blessed for obeying God and cursed for disobeying God.And at the same time,the concept of"chosen" and "repentance" are emphasized through the repetition of characters'recurrent fate.Besides these two concepts,there are many themes which are often highlighted by the repetition of a leitwort or a certain motif.There are a lot of repetitions of sequence of actions in biblical narrative,and they're neatly arranged except for some slight variations.It is these deliberate changes that weave the author's intention into this precise structure.In addition,biblical authors design a system of"promise-fulfillment" to verify the authenticity and authority of God by corresponding repetition.Repetitions are like the signals by whose appearance the authorial intention is reinforced repeatedly.The thesis concludes that authorial intention determines and controls the choice of biblical narrative technique.All the techniques are fully considered and well-designed,they work together well in transmitting religious values and thoughts.