A Study Of The Space-Time Narrative In Olga Tokarczuk's Work

Olga Tokarczuk(1962--)is a Polish writer who win the Nobel Prize for Literature.She creatively uses a variety of literary styles to reflect on the real world by incorporating mystical elements such as folk myths,heroic epics,fables,religions and even dreams.In addition,she also pays attention to the grand history of the Polish nation,the insignificant individuals in the historical changes,the female images that lose the right to speak,the damaged natural environment,the whole human existence and other aspects of the content.Her works cover history,race,ecology,gender,philosophical thinking and many other themes.Olga Tokarczuk’s main narrative works have distinct features of time and space.This thesis focuses on the two key words of “time” and “space”,relies on the narrative theory of time and space respectively to analyze the time and space processing techniques used in her works and the unique types of time and space created by the author,so as to understand Olga Tokarczuk’s superb literary creation skills and the deep ideological implications behind the special types of time and space.The important part of this thesis can be divided into three chapters.The first and second sections of Chapter one refer to Gerard Genette’s time narrative theory to analyze the specific application of time sequence and time distance techniques in the works.The third section discusses three typical types of time in the works: Cosmic time,historical time and psychological time.The purpose of this part is to explore the unique and novel time forms created by her while destroying and dispelling the original story time,as well as the author’s deep concern for individual survival state.Chapter two makes comprehensive use of the spatial narrative achievements of several theorists to analyze the spatial narrative characteristics of the works.The first two sections respectively study the types of spatial places presented in the content of the novel and the spatial forms of the texts.The third section focuses on the analysis of the spatial types and functions of the author’s "home style","house style" and "dream style".By dealing with the diversity of space,the author expresses her deep thoughts of "home consciousness","root-seeking complex","feminism","individual survival" and so on.Chapter three mainly analyzes how the author integrates time and space.By shaping the image of the fusion of time and space,using the artistic techniques of the spatialization of time and the chronization of space,the author realizes the aesthetic unity of time and space,and finally achieves the aesthetic effect of "defamiliarization",bringing readers a new "modern" reading experience.On the whole,Olga Tokarczuk’s handling of time and space conforms to the "fragmented" writing characteristics advocated by her,forming a unique model of "star novels".At the same time,the form of the text serves the thought of the text.The unique and diverse types of time and space reveal the deep ideological connotation of the author,so that the themes of her works crosses various boundaries and shines with the brilliance of philosophy and speculation.