An Interpretation Of Narrative Progression In Disgrace From The Perspective Of Rhetorical Narratology

J.M.Coetzee is a famous contemporary novelist in South Africa,he has won the top prize of novel in Britain twice—Booker Prize,and he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2003.Coetzee's works are thoughtful and well-designed,which profoundly reflects the predicament and helplessness of the South African people in the era of the post-apartheid.His masterpiece Disgrace not only shows the “disgrace” of the protagonist Lurie to the audience in the level of story,but also demonstrates the hatred and struggle between the two races in the level of discourse.At present,most of the narrative studies on the novel Disgrace remain in the field of classical narratology,meanwhile there are also few researches on this novel involving the post-classical narratology.The innovation of this thesis is to analyze the narrative progression of the novel Disgrace by using the emerging theory of rhetorical narratology and the method of combining the internal and external studies.The aim of this paper is to reveal Coetzee's profound thinking on the post-colonial society of South Africa and to explore the aesthetic value which contains in the narrative strategy of the novel.This thesis consists of three parts,including Introduction,the main body,and Conclusion.The main contents are as follows:The first part is Introduction,which interprets the research background,innovation and practical significance of this paper,summarizes the domestic and foreign academic research status of Coetzee and the novel Disgrace,and brief introduces the author's life and his main works.The second part is the main body,which consists of four Chapters:Chapter One mainly concerns the definition and the forming process of rhetorical narratology,discusses the basic principles of the narrative progression and the main contents of James Phelan's rhetorical theory of narrative.Narrative progression is synthesis of the textual dynamics and the readerly dynamics,and these two dynamics work together to promote the story.Textual dynamics are the process within the text,and through this process,the narrative moves from beginning through middle to ending.The readerly dynamics are the reader's response to the text,such as cognition,emotion,and ethics.As for narrative judgment is the bridge between the textual dynamics and the readerly dynamics,which manifests in three aspects: the interpretive,ethical,and aesthetic judgment.Chapter Two elaborates on the instabilities,one of the elements that constitute the textual dynamics in the novel Disgrace.Instabilities refer to the reporting of a sequence of related events involved in the continuous advancing process of narrative,and in these events the characters and their situations undergo some change,which constitute the instabilities of the narrative progression.In the novel Disgrace,the instabilities manifest in the conflicts between the protagonist Lurie and other characters,Lurie and his environments,Lurie and himself.This chapter will divide the novel into three parts: the beginning,the middle,and the ending to discuss the internal driving forces of the narrative progression.Chapter Three mainly explores another element that constitutes the textual dynamics—tensions,it reflects in the discrepancies including the knowledge,judgments,values or belief between the narrator and the audience,between the implied author and the audience.This chapter will analyze it from two aspects,the first aspect is the unreliable narrative caused by the restricted third-person perspective which adopts in Disgrace.The emergence of such unreliable narrative increases the distance between the narrator and the authorial audience,thus creating tensions.The second aspect is because the different values and other factors between the implied author and the audience,which also indirectly produces the tensions.Chapter Four mainly analyzes the second dimension of the narrative progression—readerly dynamics.It is generated by the audience's ongoing responses to the textual dynamics,that is,how the audience make their own judgments on such a narrative.In rhetorical reading,the audience generally makes three kinds of narrative judgment: interpretive judgment,ethical judgment,and aesthetic judgment.Interpretive judgment is about the nature of the events and other elements of the narrative;ethical judgment refers to the moral value of characters and actions;aesthetic judgment is the artistic quality of the narrative.These three reader's reactions in reverse influence the implied author's choice of the text.The last is Conclusion,which makes a brief summary to the whole thesis: Coetzee puts a profound theme which left over from history into a seemingly ordinary story.His thoughts on such a historical problem embodies in his delicate narrative structure.Coetzee exposes the complex social contradictions between the whites and the blacks in South Africa,through his manipulating of the narrative progression.