Metaleptic Means,cosmopolitan End: A Narratological Reading Of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas

As one of the most representative novels of David Mitchell(1969-),Cloud Atlas raises a wide range of academical discussion and study since its publication.The first group of scholars shows great interest in the form of Cloud Atlas,while a good many critics commit themselves to decoding the story’s multiple thematic implications,among which the study of the text’s cosmopolitan calling is most inspiring and outstanding.Combining the focalizations of the former two parties,the third camp puts the equivalent weight on the form and the content.This thesis plans to follow the third party to make a synthetic method of form and content analysis,especially working on metalepsis.Metalepsis,a Genettian coinage,which,as a matter of fact,usually appears along with the narrative structure of embedding that turns out to be the most salient feature of Cloud Atlas.Critics almost uniformly neglect the using of it.On this account,I am going to study metalepsis,with an attempt to figure out how it is applied in the story and in what way it helps to convey the theme of cosmopolitanism.Apart from the introduction and the conclusion,the thesis is composed of three parts.The first chapter traces the transformation route of metalepsis from a rhetorical device to a narratological concept.The next two chapters shift to the textual analysis of Cloud Atlas.Chapter Two examines the two types of metalepsis intertwined within the novel’s embedded structure and how the metalepsis narrative skill helps shape character identity as different modes of cosmopolitans,which actually signifies the extension of cosmopolitanism from crossing national boundaries to transgressing all borders of discrimination.Chapter Three explores the temporal dimension of metalepsis which in this novel shows a special temporal pattern and how this pattern leads readers to make a diachronic approaching to the six spatiotemporally distinctive narratives,with an attempt to reveal the novel’s ultimate calling for constructing cosmopolitanism by incorporating ethics of the other.