Narratology and the Stylistics of Fiction

Narratology and the Stylistics of FictionNarratology and the Stylistics of Fiction play a great role in novel critical theory of contemporary Western. Both Narratology and the Stylistics of Fiction use linguistic model to study literary works. They are strong interdisciplinary discipline. They are not only the same in the basic position, but also have important overlap surface in the study object. There are still many differences in the nature of them. Stylistics only focuses on the author's word choice, ignores the structure laws of the novel, and describes the narrative techniques and other issues, which is the study object of Narratology. We can say they form a mutually comparative，complementary dialectical relation. The complementary relation between Narratology and Stylistics just not focus on studying the content and principle of novel, the more important is, on the level of novel’s technique and principle. “Discourse”of Narratology and “Style” of Stylistics have more direct comparative，complementary dialectical relation. If we consider both “Discourse” and “Style”, we can make a comprehensive study of principle and technique of novel.The book tries to make a deep systematic study of main theory model, the first part mainly make a systematic analysis of the theory of classic Narratology, focusing on the discussion of the level of “structure”.Narratology is a theory of narrative. It examines what all narratives, and only narratives have in common as well as what enables them to differ from one another qua narratives, and it aims to describe the narrative-specific system of rules presiding over narrative production and processing. From the book, we know the distinction between “story”and “discourse”about Narratology. They are the concepts of works by two corresponding levels which are more used to describe narrative works in the contemporary Western theory. The significance of the narrative works is in the extent derived from the interaction between the two levels. For a long time, people use dichotomy to describe narrative works in the western literary criticism .in the traditional literary criticism of western, for example, “content”and “form”, “m aterial”and “technique”, “content”and “style”and so on . When researching the expression of works, traditional critics just pay attention to the writers’ choice of words and making sentences. Russian formalist proposed a new dichotomy, the distinction between “story (material)”or “story (fabula)”and “sjuzet”. “fa bula” means the events which is arranged according to the actual time and causality . “sjuzet” means artistic treatment or processing of form of these materials. Later, French Structuralism scientist T.Todorov came up with two concepts: “discourse”and “plot”to distinguish materials and expression of narrative works. The scope which “story” and “discourse” are referred to is basically the same. But we think that “discourse” is better than “plot”, the reason is that if we use “plot”to represent formal of works, it is easily to cause conceptual confusion. French Structuralism scientist G.Genette brought up trichotomy in 1972, for he paid more attention to the narratology, and he wanted to cancel the confusion which led by “recit”. His trichotomy: (1) “histoire”, which is the narrative content ;(2) “recit”, which is used to depict oral discourse or discourse in written from of story .(3) “narrative”, is the act or process which cause discourse to generate. From thetrichotomy , we can know that G.Genette divided “discourse”into “recit”and “narrative”. In the process of constructing the model of trichotomy, he repeatedly stressed its importance and primacy of the narration: if there is n’t narration, recit won’t exist, then there isn’t the fictitious event which is described. The distinction between “discourse” and “story” must base on the relative independentability of “story”. In this book, the author also shows us the Narratology’s plot view and character view. Russian formalist don’t see plot as a part of content of works, however, they see plot as the part of form. They think there is no relation between “sjuzet” and “fa bula”. fa bula” means the events which is arranged according to the actual time and causality . “sjuzet” means artistic treatment or processing of form of these materials, especially rearranging the story in time. They have two different understandings of “f a bula”, the first is a series of things which is described by works, and the second is the thing which is happened actually. However, the story in literary works is always fabricated. These are different from structuralism scientists’views; let’s look at Morphology of the Folktale of V.Propp. His research aims to abstract the same pattern from different kinds of folktales in order to do effective classification. From the structural standpoint, it means the basic unit of the story is not a man but the behavior function of the man in the story. In the more than one hundred folktales which he studied, although the names and features of characters always change, there are only 31 kinds of the behavior function of characters .No whether how many functions the story have (no story have all 31 kinds), these functions will place as the order of natural development which is summed up by Propp .The behavior function which is abstracted by Propp shows general characters of things, gives reliable basis for classifications. The behavior function, always arranges as the order of natural development, isn’t artistic treatment or processing of form of these materials, but is an abstract of content of the event. The plot view of Propp contrast sharply with the plot view of Russian formalist. Let’s turn to the character view .The character view of Narratology is “functional” .this character view contrast sharply with “p sychological”character view. “Functional” character view is subordinate to “actor”of plot or action. Plot is primary, character is secondary, and the function of character propels the development of plot. Some western critics think the order of “functional”view is: Aristotle---- Russian formalist l---- Structuralism Narratology. Aristotle distinct “character (person)” from “character” of the character (person), character (person) itself is “actor”, while“character”of the character (person) is full of personality, exist independently from action. In English, “性格”(ethos) just can translate as “character”. Because “character” is not only referring to the person’s “性格”,but also referring to the person itself. Therefore, it is easily make confusion in meaning .If we translate English into Chinese, it is also turn up confusion. Aristotle said “character gives us qualities ”,this sentence means “人物性格决定人物的品质”.Mr. luo according to original Greek text translates the sentence into “决定剧中人物的品质是由他们‘性格’决定的”,another translator translates it into “我们从人物可看出作品的特色”according to English version. he gives a wrong translation, the reason is that he treats “character”(性格)as “person”.Style has broad meaning and narrow meaning, in the narrow sense; it refers to the literary style, including the artistic features of literary language, languagecharacteristics or tone of voice of the work, the author's language habits, as well as a specific genre or the language style of development of literary creation stage, etc. In the broad sense; it refers to various kinds of varieties of languages in one language, because style has broad meaning and narrow meaning, stylistics can be divided into general stylistics and literary stylistics, they study two different areas respectively. R.Carter and P.Simpson classifieds stylistics as Forms stylistics, functional stylistics, discourse stylistics, Socio-historical and socio-cultural stylistics, literary stylistics and linguistic stylistics .Literary stylistics refers specifically to the style school which aims to illustrate the thematic meaning of literary texts and aesthetic value. Literary stylistics is the bridge connecting linguistics with literary criticism. It focuses on discussing how authors choose language to express and strengthen the thematic meaning and aesthetic effects. L.Spitzer who is called the father of literary stylistics used to proposal an explanation model named “philological circle”: First finding out language features which deviate from the conventional in the works, and then making a interpretation from writer's side, and then coming back to the details of the works by considering the relevant factors which are to be confirmed or modified. To learn more about the nature of literary stylistics, we need to discuss the school which distinct literary stylistics from two sides, literary and non-literary, literary stylistics intend to start from the characteristics of the literary language to clarify the distinction between literary and non-literary。