英美小说要素解析

Plot: A Sequence of Interrelated Actions or Events. Plot, or the structure of action, it generally refers to the scheme or pattern of events in a work of fiction. A plot is a plan or groundwork for a story, based on conflicting human motivations, with the actions resulting from believable and realistic human response.Types of Conflict:①External Conflict: Man and nature, man and society, and man and man.②Internal Conflict: It focuses on two or more elements contesting within the protagonist’s own character.Exposition(情节交代): It is where everything is introduced is the beginning section in which the author provides the necessary background information, sets and scene, establishes the situation, and dates the action. It usually introduces the characters and the conflict, or at least the potential for conflict.Complication(纠葛): Which is sometimes referred to as the rising action, develops and intensifies the conflict. The rising action(起始行动) is when things begin to escalate. It takes the reader from the exposition and leads them towards the climax. This part tends to be dramatic and suspenseful.Climax(高潮)：When you finally take a breath after holding it in suspense. This is the most emotional part of the book.Crisis(关子)：It( also referred to as the climax) is that moment at which the plot reaches its point of greatest emotional intensity; it is the turning point of the plot, directly precipitating the resolution. It is the reversal or” turning point”.Falling action(下降行动)：Once the crisis, or turning point, has been reached, the tension subsides and the plot moves toward its conclusion. It is when everything tends to slow down, and the climax is over.Resolution(冲突解开)：It is the final section of the plot which records the outcome of the conflict and establishes some new equilibrium. The resolution is also referred to as the conclusion, the end or the denouement. This is the final part of the story when everything is wrapped up. Sometimes the story is finished off completely, answering every reader's question. Sometimes authors leave mysterious, to intrigue the reader. Or sometimes authors leave hints of a sequel.Catastrophe: Applied to tragedy only.Denouement：Applied to both comedy and tragedy.The ordering of plot—Chronological plotting—Flashback: It is interpolated narratives or scenes( often justified, or naturalized, as a memory, a reverie, or a confession by one of the characters) which represent events that happened before the time at which the work opened.Character：They are the persons represented in a dramatic or narrative work, who are interpreted by the reader as being endowed with particular moral, intellectual, and emotional qualities by inferences from what the persons say and their distinctive ways of saying it –the dialogue—and from what they do—the action. A character may remain essentially“stable,”or unchanged in outlook and disposition, from beginning to end of a work, or may undergo a radical change, either through a gradual process of development, or as the result of a crisis. Whether a character remains stable or changes, the reader of a traditional and realistic work expects “consistency”--- ---the character should not suddenly break off and act in a way not plausibly grounded in hisor her temperament as we have already come to know it.Motivation: The grounds in the characters temperament, desires, and moral nature for their speech and actions.Types of characters—protagonist: The chief character in a plot, on whom our interest centers.(or alternatively, the hero or heroine) It is the major, or central, character of the plot.Antagonist: If the plot is such that he or she is pitted against and important opponent, that character is called the antagonist. It is his opponent, the character against whom the protagonist struggles or contends.Flat characters: they are those who embody or represent a single characteristic, trait, or idea, or at most a very limited number of such qualities. Flat characters are also referred to as type characters, as one-dimensional characters, or when they are distorted to create humor, as caricatures.Stock characters: Flat characters have much in common with the kind of stock characters who appear again and again in certain types of literary works. A flat character (also called a type, or “two-dimensional”), Forster says, is built around “a single idea or quality”and is presented without much individualizing detail, and therefore can be fairly adequately described in a single phrase or sentence.Round characters: They are just the opposite. They embody a number of qualities and traits, and are complex multidimensional characters of considerable intellectual and emotional depth who have the capacity to grow and change. A round character is complex in temperament and motivation and is represented with subtle particularity; such a character therefore is as difficult to describe with any adequacy as a person in real life, and like real persons, is capable of surprising us.Dynamic characters: They exhibit a capacity to change; static characters do not. As might be expected, the degree and rate of character change varies widely even among dynamic characters.Static characters: They leave the plot as they entered it, largely untouched by the events that have taken place.Methods of characterization-- Telling: It relies on exposition and direct commentary by the author.In telling, the author intervenes authoritatively in order to describe, and often to evaluate, the motives and dispositional qualities of the characters. Characterization through the use of names, through appearance, and by the author. Showing: It involves the author’s stepping aside, as it were, to allow the characters to reveal themselves directly through their dialogue and their actions. In showing(also called“the dramatic method”), the author simply presents the characters talking and acting and leaves the reader to infer the motives and dispositions that lie behind what they say and do.The author may show not only external speech and actions, but also a character’s inner thoughts, feelings, and responsiveness to events; for a highly developed mode of such inner showing, see stream of consciousness. Characterization through dialogue, and action.Setting: The stage against which the story unfolds.( Place and objects in fiction) The overall setting of a narrative or dramatic work is the general locale, historical time, and social circumstances in which its action occurs; the setting of a single episode orscene within such a work is the particular physical location in which it takes place. Types of setting—Natural and ManufacturedThe language used in description of settingThe functions of setting: Setting as a background for action, antagonist, a means of creating appropriate atmosphere, a means of revealing character, and a means of reinforcing theme.Point of view: The events of a story may be told as they appear to one or more participants or observers. In first-person narration the point of view is automatically that of the narrator.More variation is possible in third-person narration, where the author may choose to limit his or her report to what could have been observed or known by one of the characters at any given point in the action--- or may choose to report the observations and thoughts of several characters. The author might choose to intrude his or her own point of view.Narrator: It is the speaker or the voice of the literary text, the agent who does the narration. The narrator, like any character in fiction, only exists in a narrative, and he cannot be identified with anything of the real-life author of a literary work.Various points of view—First person:①Advantages: First, he creates an immediate sense of reality. Second, the writer has a ready-made principle of selection.② Difficulties: It may only strike us when we try to write stories ourselves.Second personThird person: There are three variants: omniscient, limited omniscient, and objective or dramatic.Mingling of points of view: It is because for the purpose of sustaining interest or creating suspense.A brief summary: 1. First person( I): All these first-person narrators may have(1) complete understanding,(2) partial or incorrect understanding, or(3) no understanding at all.①Major participantⅰtelling his or her story as a major mover,ⅱtelling a story about others and also about herself or himself as one of the major inter-actors,ⅲtelling a story mainly about others; this narrator is on the spot and completely involved but is not a major mover.②Minor participant, telling a story about events experienced and/ or witnessed.③Uninvolved character, telling a story not witnessed but reported to the narrator by other means. 2. Second person( you): Occurs only when speaker has more authority on a character’s action than the character himself or herself. Occurs only in brief passages when necessary. 3. Third person( she, he, it, they):①Omniscient. Omniscient speaker sees all, reports all, knows inner workings of minds of characters.②Limited omniscient. Action is focused on one major character.③Dramatic or third-person objective. Speaker reports only actions and speeches. Thoughts of characters can be expressed only as dialogue.Theme: It is the central idea or a statement about life that unifies and controls the total work.Points of theme:1. A theme does not exist as an intellectual abstraction that an author superimposes on the work like icing on a cake.2. The theme may be less prominent and less fully developed in some works of fiction than in others.3. It is entirely possible that intelligent readers will differ, at times radically, on just what the themeof a given a work is.4. The theme of a given work need not be in accord with the reader’s particular beliefs and values. As a general rule, then, we should assume that the ideas of authors grow out of their values, and that values are embodied in their stories along with the ideas. But we must remember that although literature is full of ideas that may strike us, at least initially, as unpleasant, controversial, or simply wrongheaded, literary sophistication and plain common sense should warn us against dismissing them out of hand.Identifying theme:1. It is important to avoid confusing a work’s theme with its subject or situation.2. We must be as certain as we can that our statement of theme does the work full.3. The test of any theme we may propose is whether it is fully and completely supported by the work’s other elements.4. The title an author gives the work often suggests a particular focus or emphasis for the reader’s attention.Style: It has traditionally been defined as the manner of linguistic expression in Prose or verse--as how speakers or writers say whatever it is that they say. TheWord style, derived from the Latin word stilus, is understood to mean the way in which writers assemble words to tell the story, develop the argument, dramatize the play, or compose the poem. Style is to be judged on the degree of its adaptability. Elements of style—Diction: Choice of words, and Syntax: Construction of sentences.Oedipus complex: ①It is a term coined by Sigmund Freud to designate a son’s subconscious feeling of love toward his mother and jealousy and hatred toward his father. ②D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers is a case in point.Tone: It refers to the methods by which writers convey attitudes, it refers not to attitudes but to those techniques and modes of presentation that reveal or create these attitudes. It is a means of creating a relationship or conveying an attitude.Types of irony:1. Verbal irony: It is a statement in which one thing is said and another is meant.2. Situational irony: It or irony of situation, refers to conditions that are measured against forces that transcend and overpower human capacities.3. Dramatic irony: It is a special kind of situational irony; it applies when a character perceives a situation in a limited way while the audience, including other characters, may see it in greater perspective.1.1 The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky—Stephen Crane 1.2 Christmas Day in the Morning—Pearl S. Buck2.1 The Catbird Seat—James Thurber 2.2 Two kinds—Amy Tan3.1 To Build a Fire—Jack London 3.2 A Horseman in the Sky—Ambrose Bierce4.1 A Clean, Well-lighted Place—Ernest Hemingway 4.2 The Broken Globe—Henry Kreisel5.1 Yellow Woman—Leslie Silko 5.2 Rain—W. Somerset Maugham6.1 My Oedipus Complex—Frank O’Connor 6.2 Haircut—Ring Lardner7.1 The Horse Dealer’s Daughter—D.H. Lawrence 7.2 Luck—Mark Twain。