Decoding The Response-inviting Structure In William Faulkner's Three Short Stories

William Faulkner is one of the most influential writers in the history of American literature,and in 1949,he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.He applies a lot of traditional and innovative techniques in his writings which deeply explore the reasons for the collapse of the Old South.Also he critically analyzes the spiritual crisis of the Southern society and the Southerners in the process of historical changes.His profound insight in the American South and the whole Western world,as well as his fruitful experiment and innovation in the forms and techniques of writing,has drawn the attention and interests of readers and critics all over the world.William Faulkner is a very prolific writers,and he wrote 19 novels,75 short stories and 2 volumes of poetry in his whole life.Most of his novels won universal praise,and became the focus of the critics.Studies and researches on his works,both domestically and internationally,concentrate on his most important novels.But in terms of themes and techniques of his writings,his short stories have equal shares of literary values and meanings,and are becoming increasingly important topics in the critic circle.And till now,researchers have covered the fields of temporal ordering,space,stylistic features,narrative techniques and linguistic features.However,for one thing,few scholars touch on the study of literary works by data collection based on corpus linguistics.For another,study on response-inviting structure to interpret the themes of literary works is also very rare.It is the blank in this field that makes this thesis possible and valuable.Wolfgang Iser,as one of the most important theorists and representatives of Receptional Aesthetics,has discussed the response-inviting structure of literary texts.According to Iser,blanks and indeterminacies are two important parts of the response-inviting structure of literary works.It is the structure that invites readers to fill the blanks creatively and engage in the process of reconstructing the meaning of the work.Based on that,Chinese scholar Zhu Liyuan holds the view that response-inviting structure is the fundamental feature of literary texts.And it is reflected in each layer of the basic structure of literary works.He classifies literary works into five layers:the layer of pronunciation and intonation,the layer of meaning construction,the layer of rhetorical devices,the layer of images and the layer of themes and thoughts.With the help of the computer software AntConc3.4.4 Tool,this thesis will analyze the response-inviting structure in detail by specific examples in the text from a linguistic perspective:the layer of pronunciation and intonation,the layer of meaning construction and the layer of rhetorical devices.Then it will analyze and interpret the themes behind the response-inviting structure from a psychological perspective:the layer of images and the layer of themes and thoughts.This thesis conducts the survey mainly on three famous short stories of William Faulkner in the early 1930s:That Evening Sun,A Rose for Emily and Dry September.The author of the thesis combines traditional ways of analysis and overall features in the context of postmodernism.This thesis tries to interpret the blanks and indeterminacies in these three short stories layer by layer so as to decode the hidden response-inviting structure in them.William Faulkner attaches great importance to the involvement and engagement of readers in literary works.He guides readers to understand the plot and characters of the stories by providing the clues of blanks and indeterminacies when he designs the plot and creates main characters.In the process of reading,readers think and analyze and reason and imagine,which is the most vital and central step to interpret the themes of works.The process of decoding the response-inviting structure makes the literary works more meaningful and profound,and makes it possible to interpret the works from multiple viewpoints.This thesis contains six parts,including the Introduction and Conclusion.In the part of Introduction,it covers the writer William Faulkner's life and writings,a brief introduction of the three chosen short stories,literature review and theoretical framework.At the same time,it touches on the research purpose,research methodology,and the significance of interpretation.In the first three Chapters,with the aid of AntConc3.4.4 Tool,the response-inviting structures of That Evening Sun,A Rose for Emily and Dry September,are decoded,comprehensively and systematically,from the layer of pronunciation and intonation,the layer of meaning construction and the layer of rhetorical devices.The fourth Chapter,based on the detailed analysis of the first three chapters,probes into the hidden themes of the three short stories from the layer of images and the layer of themes and thoughts.In the part of Conclusion,the author of the thesis points out that there are lots of blanks and indeterminacies in Faulkner's three selected short stories,and it is the blanks and indeterminacies that constitute the response-inviting structure of literary works.