Study Of The Narrative Act Of Doctor Zhivago

In 1958, the Soviet writer Pasternak, who was "respected by the entire civilized world", won the Nobel Prize "for his important achievement both in contemporary lyrical poetry and in the field of the great Russian epictradition." His classic novel Doctor Zhivago perfectly combines poetic language with historic narration. Based on previous researches made by Chinese and foreign scholars, this thesis focuses on the narrative mode, language and intertextuality of the novel Doctor Zhivago. Microscopic analysis will be used to reveal its language style, writing features and narrative art, thereby to explore the hidden theme and spiritual connotation. Both Russian rhetoric literary theory and western narrative theory are applied to accurately grasp the language style and narrative characteristics of Pasternak’s novel. The innovation of the thesis lies in its adoption of comprehensive perspectives of literature and art, linguistics, culture studies, philosophy, etc. and a close study of the text.The whole thesis is divided into five parts:introduction, three chapters and conclusion.Introduction summarizes the situation of narrative research on Doctor Zhivago both home and abroad, defines the connotation and extension of the concept of narrative, and sorts out how to approach the novel by means of two remarkably different theories, i.e. Russian literary theory and western narrative theory.The first chapter discusses the narrative mode of the novel from three aspects: the novelist’s emotion, plotting and the processing of time and space in the text. The author not only investigates narrative subject type, narrative tone and style, but also explains the implicated narrative structure of Russian fairy tale as well as the features of Platonic Chronotope of biography, road and idyllic. Pasternak upheld the concept of independent thinking and the pursuit of freedom. In this inopportune novel he created, the author abandoned soviet literature tradition of socialist realism and established a unique narrative structure. The artistic world was constructed in accordance to the character’s feelings of the social events and the living environment. The narrator conveys the author’s emotion and attitude toward historical events through weaving together the immediate feelings and rational thinking of the protagonist. Referring to the narrative structure of The Bible and Russian folk tales, the author pays special attention to the character’s psychological changes rather than the logic of the plot. That is to say, the plot is not to present history, but to express emotion and philosophical views. In the text, time is strongly subjective, while the artistic space is full of dynamic and three-dimensional sense, showing features of Bakhtin’s theory of Chronotope.In Chapter 2, Vinogradov’s theory of literary rhetoric is applied to analyze the narrative language of the novel, including the narrator’s language, the characters’ language and the poetic language. As regards the narrator’s language, based on the analysis of the expression means such as speech sounds, words, and figures of speech, it is found that a kind of strong sentiment is expressed between the lines of narrative, lyrical and descriptive language. This demonstrates Pasternek’s unique feelings towards the philosophical propositions concerning life and death, love and family, nature and human society. The melancholy and miserable narrative tone runs through the novel. As for the characters’ language, Pasternek vividly depicts the following four characters various types of dialogue:hypocritical Komarovsky, childlike Commissar Kintz, vulgar Markel, and deep-thinking Zhivago. Each of these characters represents a kind of people:the language features of the first three characters are "insincere", "frothy" and "meretricious", while the language features of the fourth character are "elegant" and "profound". The language of the protagonist, Zhivago, demonstrates not only the features of solemnity and concision of written language, but also a profound social significance and rich philosophical connotations. It is the speculative characters’ language that sublimates the theme of the novel. In terms of the poetic language, in Urey Zhivago’s Poems, Pasternak uses symbolism to weaken the ambience where the lyric hero moves and the development of plots, and to change the poetic language into the vector of the writer’s mind. By this way, the readers can see vivid pictures full of concrete images, and keenly feel the strong emotions and read the profound philosophic thoughts. In this chapter, the artistic charm and theme of Pasternak’s poetry is summarily analyzed on lexical and structural levels.Chapter Three discusses the narrative intertextuality features of Doctor Zhivago. Section One analyzes its reference to and cognition of Blok from three aspects, i.e. "the Eternal Womanliness", "the theme of city", and "we are children of Russian terrible times". In his novel, Pasternak absorbs, deepens and develops the "the eternal female world", city theme and revolutionary ideas of Blok, a literary pioneer in Silver Age. To be more specific, the writer sublimates the morbidezza and kindness of the heroine Lala to the height of national mother, lamenting over the bitterness and suffering of Russian people; the writer regards Moscow as the witness of the course of history, bestowing on it the symbolic significance of the holy Jerusalem; the writer presents his comprehensive and in-depth thoughts about the social revolution in Russia, conveying the idea that the social revolution has caused the tragedies one after another. Section Two reveals the intertextual connection of the prose narration in the novel to the stories in Bible from the perspectives of sufferings, death, resurgence and benevolence. Pasternak’s novel describes the doomsday-like scenes caused by the violent revolution, showing the similar significance of spiritual education as The Book of Revelation. Doctor Zhivago upholds the Christian thoughts of mutual love and respect for individuality. In his eyes, war, massacre and "society-restructuring" bring nothing but sufferings to human beings, and dim the pursuit of individuality and freedom. It is the fraternity thought and artistic creation that will be best remembered by later generation, i.e. spiritual "rebirth" and "immortality". For Pasternak, Bible is far beyond being a religious text. Its tremendous influence on Doctor Zhivago reflects Pasternak’s understanding of concepts like individuality, art, history, revolution, etc.The Conclusion Chapter sums up the basic ideas proposed in this dissertation, summarizes the general characteristics of narration, language and intertextuality of the novel. The present author argues that the reasons for Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago being canonized in Russian literature have less to do with its criticism against Russian violent revolution, or the author’s rebellion against the Soviet authorities than with the artistic value as a literary work-novel and unique narrative methods, terse and graceful narrative language as well as philosophical and thought-provoking content. The rhetoric devices, narrative methods and intertextuality techniques all demonstrate Pasternak’s exquisite narrative ability, his unique insights into art and life, and profound thought over the historical destiny of Russia.