The Epic Distance In The Modern European Novel Molding Process And Stylistic

This thesis takes the narratology, stylistics, Bakhtine's historical culture poetics and carnival theory and Frye's"narrative structural circularity"as the elementary theory frame, combining with methods of cultural criticism, social historical criticism, and literary historical research. The thesis also contains intensive reading of literary works and summarizing of schools, what is more, it also includes discourse and genre. The main stream of this thesis is"the epic tradition", and the emphasis is"the epic distance". This thesis specifies"the epic distance", which was raised by Mikha?l Bakhtine, and narrates the process of the destruction of"the epic distance"from three aspects: narrative distance, aesthetics distance and genre distance. The thesis researches the influence of epic distance from different angles, on the aspect of the transition of genre from epics to novels. Moreover, it also touches upon the new epic distance which were produced by the new expressional methods of new visual art.The first chapter of the paper researches the deity and half deity of the heroes in Homer's epic and their destiny tragedy from the myth background of European heroic epic. This part analyses the narrative characteristics of Homer's epic based on the narratology and analyses the characters in the sense of cultural criticism. Moreover, it researches the Medieval chivalry literature's historical contribution to the transition of genre, using the methods of social historical criticism and literary historical research. And it emphasizes investigation of the courtly love overturning the subject matter in epics and narrative contribution of the prose romance. With the method of intensive reading of literary works, this part analyses the narration and characters in Divine Comedy, and comes to a conclusion, Dante develops the epic into an individual progress of literati epics. The primary element of modern novel is individual sense and freely fabricating.Chapter Two analyses European novel's unique carnival features in Renaissance period from the angle of narrative mode with the narratology and carnival theory. In the Renaissance period, novel began to raise but the form characteristic and narrative mode didn't have a same standard. An argument about which is"the first novel"in Europe produced the analysis of the form in Metamorphoses, picaresque novels and short story Decameron. Gargantua and pantagruel emancipated the personality and the epic distance because it inverted the position of Latin and contained Bacchus spirit. Don Quixote made a great contribution to satirize a simulation of the chivalry literature, breaking the linearity structure of prose romance with the carnivalized narrative point of view and narrative levels. In this period the carnivalized features of genre have finished laying the hotbed hatching for the novel maturity.The third chapter analyses the epic distance of European novels of 18th century and its further influence from the narratology and the stylistics, combining with methods of Frye's"narrative structural circularity"and literary historical research. The detachment of deity and the return of human nature are set as the first principle of novel forming. In novels of 18th century, individualism indisputably replaces heroism and idealism. The appearance of low mimetic promotes the basic form of novels in modern times. Fielding's"comic-epic in prose"is, in fact, the departure of epic and a kind of epic-like one. The large fiction works in the 19th and 20th have crossed further over the epic distance, the echo to ancient classics from Romantism and Realism novels, the anti-ironic epic Ulysses in Modernism and the afterwards dispelling of the pattern of novel genre by Modernism all have close relationship with the epic distance.The end of this thesis (conclusion) gives an overview about heroic complex and epic complex in the history of European literature, and shows the return of"high mimetic"by John Christophe."Music epic novel"produces a genre distance, as well as a new epic distance. The thesis ends in the expectation of"New epic"explained and made by mass media.