A Comparative Study Of Romance Of Western Bower And Romeo And Juliet From The Perspective Of Narrative Focalization

In today’s world of increasingly close international interactions,scholars are increasingly conducting comparative studies of Chinese and Western literary works.As the classic works of love between China and the West,making a good comparative study of the Romance of Western Bower and Romeo and Juliet will help enhance mutual understanding between China and the West and help build a community with a shared future for mankind.French scholar Gerard Genette proposes the Narrative Focalization Theory,and he states that “focalization is to select and limit the narrative information in the sense of traditional omniscient narration”,according to the degree to which narrative focus restricts narrative information,he classified the focalization into “zero focalization”,“internal focalization” and “external focalization”.Based on Gerard Genette’s narrative focalization theory,this study makes a comparative study of the application of narrative focalization in Wang Shifu’s Romance of Western Bower and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.Analyzing the use of narrative focalization in the two classic Chinese and Western love dramas,their similarities and distinctions and the reasons behind.This study mainly contains three questions:(1)What are the narrative focalizations in Romance of Western Bower and Romeo and Juliet?(2)What are the similarities and distinctions of narrative focalization between Romance of Western Bower and Romeo and Juliet?(3)What are the reasons of the similarities and distinctions of narrative focalization in Romance of Western Bower and Romeo and Juliet?The result shows that:(1)The narrative focalizations used in Romance of Western Bower and Romeo and Juliet are mainly zero focalization and internal focalization in Genette’s narrative focus theory,but there is no external focalization.(2)The similarities and distinctions of the narrative focalization between Romance of Western Bower and Romeo and Juliet are presented through the characters and plots.In terms of similarity,both of the two dramas apply zero focalization and internal focalization,without external focalization.And when focusing on similar characters and similar plots such as the Rose in Romance of Western Bower and the nurse in Romeo and Juliet,they both play similar narrative roles,promote and enrich the plots.In terms of distinctions,they are also reflected in the arrangement of the characters and the plots.The Romance of Western Bower focuses more on non-main characters than Romeo and Juliet and applies multiple internal focalization more,while the latter has more applications of the variable internal focalization and the relatively larger number of characters makes its narrative focalization more flexible and versatile.(3)The reasons for the similarity of the narrative focalization of the two dramas lies in that they both have the same creative theme.They fight against feudal ethics and praise free love.And they have similar creative processes that both of them are re-creation works based on previous creations.In addition,they also have a similar creative tone.With the unique artistic beauty of drama,they have written a very youthful love under the yoke of feudalism.The distinctions between the two dramas stem from the different aesthetic orientation.Chinese dramas tend to have a happy ending,while Western dramas pay more attention to the self of characters and destructive endings are more favored.Furthermore,the different backgrounds of the times and the cultures of the East and the West also lead to distinctions.