“Whatever Is Lost Will Be Found”:on The Natural And Unnatural Narrative Strategies In The Gap Of Time

Jeanette Winterson,as a pioneering postmodern writer in Britain,is known for her unique narrative techniques and ethical themes.The Gap of Time(2015),as her salute work to Shakespeare,makes a bold attempt to rewrite the narrative time,narrative voice and characters in The Winter's Tale.The background of the story changes from a fictional country to modern society,and the simple classic narrative text turns into a postmodern multinarrative text.Meanwhile,the adaption remains the main story frame in the original work.The difference is the process of losing and searching for love and forgiveness extends from King Leontes to almost every protagonist.Based on the analytical techniques provided by natural and the unnatural narratology,this thesis attempts to explore the narrative pattern of the combination of natural and unnatural narratives and the original theme of losing and searching for love and forgiveness Winterson highlights in The Gap of Time.This thesis separately analyzes Winterson's rewriting of narrative time,narrative voices and characters in The Gap of Time.Firstly,after comparing the time order with the original play,it is noticeable that Winterson has disrupted the natural time order of the original play.On the one hand,she uses the anachronies to emphasize the moment when Leon(the adapted version of Leontes)makes the big mistake and loses love and forgiveness.On the other hand,she arranges the interlocking repetition to present the complete storyline of the original play.Meanwhile,by compiling statistics of the unnatural tense,the author finds that the past,present and future are reversed in characters' mind and they are in a painful state of mental breakdown after losing love and forgiveness.Then the analysis goes on to the rewriting of narrative voices in the novel.Winterson uses both first-person narration and third-person omniscient narration to emphasize the core event of the novel,which is “Abandoning Perdita”,and the psychological process of losing and searching for love and forgiveness of both the narrators and the writer.At the same time,the interspersed unnatural narrative voices bring readers into narrators and characters' emotional experience of losing and searching,which constitutes a multi-dimensional emotion experiences that all the members participate in.Finally,by collecting and analyzing fragmented information in the text,the author finds that Winterson's naturalized rewriting of characters provides a reliable explanation for Leo's unnatural emotions,Xeno's refusal to Tony and Mimi and Leon's communication barriers.Meanwhile,the complex emotional connection of the characters provides the source of all the love and forgiveness in the novel.To sum up,supported by the analytical methods in natural and unnatural narratology,this thesis analyses the order of the narrative time,the narrative function of the narrative voices,and the significance of rewriting characters in The Gap of Time.Combining natural narrative with unnatural narrative is helpful to better understand Winterson's emphasis of theme of love and forgiveness in the original play,all of which stimulates readers' deep reflection on the novel,on themselves and on the society.