Construction Of The Impossible World

In the existing narratological frameworks,the unnatural narrative texts that are characterized by the strikingly impossible or antimimetic elements mostly rely on the postmodern works,and those pre-postmodern unnatural narrative texts are usually ignored and marginalized by the critics.And Shakespeare's romance Cymbeline has been criticized by Shakespearean scholars for its departure from the convention of the Renaissance drama.Otherwise,it constructs a fascinating storyworld with the unnatural narrative strategies,which has a certain weight in literary typology,and so as to generate the topic of this study.The theoretical framework of this study is the unnatural narratology,which has developed into the most exciting new paradigm since the emergence of cognitive narratology.The representative Brian Richardson defines the unnatural narrative as the antimimetic texts that violate the parameters of the traditional realism or move beyond the conventions of natural narrative,while Jan Alber regards the unnatural narrative as the scenarios and events that are physically,logically or humanly impossible.And Alber's unnatural narrative theory provides the study,firstly the conceptual connotation for exploring the projected ways that Cymbeline's storyworld deviates from the real-world frames,and then the correlative logic for relating the unnatural narratology to Shakespeare's romances.Besides introduction and conclusion,there are three chapters in this thesis.The first chapter focuses on the unnatural narrative temporality.In the vision of Cymbeline,the ancient Rome by Augustus is fused with the early modern Italy and the Roman Britain is often merged with the Renaissance England.And by presenting the fusion of the distinct temporal realms in Cymbeline,Shakespeare satires the disorder of the English society in the reign of James I.Chapter two exploits the paradigm of the unnatural narrative space.Through the character soothsayer Shakespeare transgresses theboundary between the actual world and the storyworld to reconcile the paradox between the ideal and the reality,which alludes to the grand blueprint of the British Empire.Chapter three studies the characterization strategy of the unnatural characters,namely the supernatural beings of the ghostly family of Posthumus,the god Jupiter and the soothsayer.Through the conventionalized unnatural characters,Shakespeare not only foregrounds the theme of reconciliation in the play,but also achieves the dramatic reconciliation between the actual world and the storyworld.The conclusion of this study is: by the unnatural narrative strategies of narrative time,narrative space and characterization,Shakespeare constructs an impossible legendary storyworld in Cymbeline and also brings the reader into a conceptual universe with the profound plot,ideology and genre.And as the two logical fulcrums of the narrative framework in Cymbeline,the former—the court of Cymbeline and the primitive cave in Wales—implies the two different symbolic worlds of the English civilization represented by James I and the Welsh wilderness,as well as two distinct spiritual worlds of return and seclusion,while the latter—Britain and Rome—implies the epitome of the nearly 400 years' power struggle between the vassal state and the suzerain state from AD 43 to AD 410,which not only witnesses the diachronic hardships for constructing the British identity,but also opens up a new chapter for researching on the unnatural narrative paradigm of Shakespeare's romances,so as to have a noticeable pioneering significance.