| John Barth(1930-)is a prestigious contemporary American writer.His novels combine philosophical depth and complexity with biting satire and have a profound influence on the development of American and world literature.Published in 1972,Chimera was the winner of the National Book Award in the same year.As its name suggests,Chimera boasts of Barth's reinvention of the classical myth with unique forms and complex structures,including three different stories.The complicated and variant narrative provides more possibilities for readers to further comprehend this novel.This thesis believes that both the deconstructive and reconstructive tendencies can be noticed in Chimera.The deconstructive tendency subverts the traditional techniques to blaze a new trial for reconstruction.Chimera,a bizarre monster made up of three different parts,becomes the best metaphor for the reconstruction.Based on the classical narrative theory,this paper,consisting of six chapters,attempts to analyze the narrative mechanism in Chimera.Chapter One introduces the narrative theory,the literature review and the thesis structure.Chapter Two interprets the novel from the perspective of narrative time,including order,duration and frequency,discussing the change of narrative time and its significance.Focusing on the narrative space,Chapter Three analyzes the characteristics of story space and discourse space as well as their functions.Chapter Four discusses the retrospective focalization and the self-experiencing focalization in first-person narration as the main focalizations and analyzes their significant influences in revealing the hero's characteristics.Chapter Five explores the narrative communication in Chimera from the perspectives of author,reader and text.Chapter Six summarizes the narrative structure of Chimera and illustrates Barth's principle of mythopoeia,which governs the external and internal mechanism of this seemingly loosely-structured novel and manifests Barth's innovative virtuosity. |
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