Discussion On The Spatial Presentation And Forms In Su Tong’s Novels

Su Tong,one of the most important writers in modern Chinese literary world,in the course of more than 30 years of literary creation,he has been indefatigable in his effort to write,but has created 9 novels,23 novellas and nearly 150 short stories,and has made outstanding achievements.The distinct artistic style,with abundant emotion and deep insight into life can always be perceived when reading Su’s novels.Also,changes in aesthetic taste and theme connotation are presented in his opuses of different stages.It is worth noting yet is that the sense of space is an obvious feature of the text throughout his works.Put it another word,there is attention and emphasis on space and spatial elements running thorough his creation,which is closely related to the writer’s own way of artistic thinking.This thesis,which is divided into an introduction and four chapters,employs the literary theory of space between the east and the west,adopts the method of intensive reading,and studies the novel works by combining relevant theories.It studies Su’s works from the perspective of space,specifically,the corresponding physical space in stories,the spatial structure of the text,and the visual presentation of the novels,in the meantime,probing into the spatial consciousness of the writer in his creation.In the introduction part,it first combs the literature on Su Tong’s research,thus putting the problem to be studied into the range of all research results about Su,to take it into consideration,then to clear and define the significance and value of it.Secondly,it combs the theories of literature and space put forward by scholars all over the world.Moreover,based on the scale of geography,it differentiates some spatial concepts,such as locality,place,scene and so on.The first chapter focuses on the various narrative space in Su’s novels.According to the actual characteristics of his works,this part respectively examines the “North Zone of the city”(Chengbei District),houses and other typical space.The writer places his memory and life experience on the concrete physical space created by words,which can also be regarded as a characterization to a specific social and cultural situation.In short,they are not rigid background,but enrich the theme and connotation of these novels.The second chapter discusses narrative function of spatial elements in Su’s novels.He consciously uses diverse space and spatial elements to narrate in his creation,and there are different manifestations in the middle,long novels and short stories.In some novellas and novels,spatial factors generate the driving force for them to move forward,while in numerous short stories,they provide the premise for the occurrence of the stories and also provide the logic for the progression of the stories.Setting up a group of opposite space and making the relationship between them become one of the key points in a novel is also a common narrative strategy of Su.Finally,this chapter discusses the mutual expression of time and space in his works.The third chapter explores the spatial form and structure of Su’s novels.Some works show the effect of the space-time crossover.Because Su weakens linear logic of story progression deliberately,the time sequence in some novellas becomes incoherent scattered points,which shows his pursuit of the spatial form.This also coincides with the consciousness of time and space that dominates Chinese classic poetry and painting.In addition,his several novels are unfolded in a unique time sequence or around a certain theme,making the novel text present a sense of spatial pattern or modeling in structure,which engenders a distinctive aesthetic effect.The fourth chapter analyzes the spatial presentation of Su’s novels.His writing of images realized his expression of the effect of spatial painting in the art of timeliness,exactly reflecting a kind of spatial thinking mode.In addition,he sometimes inserts graphics into the text,allowing images to directly participate in narrative activities,spatializing the written words and breaking the boundary between writing and painting.These graphics just provide explanation in a spatial way for the narrative text that is in the temporal form.In brief,this thesis tries to systematically explain and grasp the relationship between Su’s novels and space in many respects,so as to gain a new comprehension and interpretation of his works.