A Study Of Polyphonic Narrative In True History Of The Kelly Gang

Before the 1970s,Australian literature had no place in the worldwide literary world.It wasn't until 1973 that Australian writer Patrick White won the Nobel Prize in Literature before pushing Australian literature to the world.After White,Peter Carey took Australian literature to new heights.As the winner of two Booker Prizes,his works deeply questioned the national culture and almost made him a spokesperson for Australian culture.As the representative work of Carey,True History of The Kelly Gang was awarded the Booker Award,Commonwealth Literature Award and other important awards,and has been recognized by many parties.The work has shaped an Australian hero,trying to tap the cultural spirit of Australia.As a historical novel,True History of The Kelly Gang makes extensive use of modern narrative techniques,showing obvious polyphonic characteristics.This thesis will start from three aspects:narrative discourse,narrative clues,and narrative style,and analyze the polyphonic narrative of True History of The Kelly Gang more comprehensively.This thesis is divided into three parts:introduction,main body and conclusion.The main body consists of three chapters.Introduction Include the origin of the selected topic,the current status of research at home and abroad,research significance and methods.The domestic and international research on True History of The Kelly Gang mainly focuses on the theme and narrative.Among them,there are more researches on the theme.Scholars use post-colonial criticism,comparative literature,new historicism and other methods to study the cultural theme,historical theme,and political theme of the work.There are also some researches on narrative,mainly on the power discourse,narrative tension,meta-narrative,ethical narrative,ambiguous and rewriting narrative skills of the text.True History of The Kelly Gang shows obvious polyphonic narrative features,but no one has fully researched this issue.This thesis mainly uses Bakhtin's and Milan Kundera's polyphonic fiction theory,combined with new historical criticism,post-colonial criticism and other critical methods,to explore the polyphonic narrative of the work and the cultural and historical connotation contained therein.Provide a new research perspective for the work,which is conducive to accurately grasp the modernity characteristics of Peter Carey's later creation,and re-recognize the position of the writer in the history of literature,which still has a warning significance for the development of contemporary Australian society.Chapter One Explore the multi-voice discourse in True History of The Kelly Gang.Bakhtin proposed his theory of polyphonic fiction in Problems of Dostoevsky 's Poetics.Polyphonic is "A plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousnesses,a genuine polyphony of fully valid voices".He believes that the essence of polyphony lies in "the fact that the voices remain independent and,as such,are combined in a unity of a higher order",which is Multi-voice utterances coexist.True History of The Kelly Gang presents the oppression,conflict and resistance in the Victorian colony through the multiple words of different characters,thus showing the characteristics of polyphony.The novel is mainly developed in the form of a letter from the Kelly,but perspective conversions are interspersed in the internal focalization.The angles of view,such as external focalization and internal focalization,are repeatedly switched to describe complex scenes from multiple angles.The writer also interspersed Kelly's self-reports with records in the form of comments and reports.At the same time,he also used methods such as quotation and retelling of others' words,then Kelly's personal words,official words in the form of news or reports and the words of his wife,partner,mother and other people are integrated into the text,making the work show a multi-narrative feature.This thesis will also discuss the dialogue between different discourses when analyzing multiple voices,such as the dialogue and conflict between the official power discourse and the civilian discourse represented by Kelly.By analyzing the dialogue between multi-voice discourses,we can deeply grasp the polyphonic narrative features of the text,and let readers form their own understanding of historical truth in the conflict of multiple discourses.Chapter Two Discusses the narrative structure of the juxtaposition of three lines inTrue History of The Kelly Gang.Milan Kundera compared Bloch's polyphony with Dostoyevsky's polyphony in The Art of Fiction,and pointed out that polyphony also refers to the alignment or dialogue between different plot cues.In terms of plot structure,there are clues in True History of The Kelly Gang that the Kelly Gang resistance to the police then failed,as well as the plots of poverty,oppression and bullying of the Irish descendants living in the Victorian colony,and Kelly's personal growth cues.This three-line juxtaposition of narrative clues makes the text structurally polyphonic.Different clues show the purposes that the work wants to express,so that True History of The Kelly Gang presents different appearances such as political novels,historical novels,and initiation story.There are richer connotations such as telling national history,reflecting on colonial culture,and paying attention to the growth of characters.Chapter Three Discusses the narrative stylistic polyphony characteristics of True History of The Kelly Gang.Milan Kundera believes that the cleverness of the polyphony in Bloch's novels is the fact that there are many styles in the novels,including novels,poetry,reports,and essays.This mixed style of style enables polyphonic novels to accept a variety of styles other than traditional novels,becoming a more expressive and inclusive literary genre.True History of The Kelly Gang uses many different stylistic forms,including references to novels and dramas,as well as local poetry and Irish myths and legends.These different styles have different narrative functions and purposes,that highlight the hero image,Australian local and ethnic characteristics,contain the theme of anti-colonial and anti-Western centralism.Conclusion The polyphonic narrative features of True History of The Kelly Gang are summarized from three aspects:multi-narrative discourse,three-line juxtaposed narrative clues,and mixed narrative style,to deepen the understanding of the modernity of the writer's later novel creation.Carey's many novels all convey cultural significance beyond text through a unique modern narrative.His exploration of narrative has pushed Australian literature to a new stage.He is one of the few characteristic and in-depth Australian writers after Patrick White.True History of The Kelly Gang retells the history affected by the colonial empire,and attempts to reconstruct the "historical memory" of the nation.The ideological connotation of the work that against colonial rule and pursuit freedom and independence,still have significance for the development of contemporary Australian society.