On The Corporeal Narrative Of Stephen King’s Fictions

Horror novels and novel-based thrillers won Stephen King a world-wide fame.Critics made controversial comments on literary value of King’s works,during the past decades,while most comments are now tend to be more positive.Nowadays,Stephen King studies are basically intrinsic,studies around themes,characters and cultural influences are pervasive.For literature forms and contents are actually an entire unit,studies on King’s text structures are also needed.Aimed at discovering the literal value and disclosing the atheistic value of King’s work,this thesis deployed researches around the uniformity of novels’ form and content,started with textual structure and narrative mechanic,focused on their organic co-relation with King’s story themes and connotations,and provided a fresh route to discover the aesthetic value of King’s novels,as well.As a green critical approach,corporeal studies helps critics in discovering body’s multiple functions among modern narratives,and also,“body” is playing a crucial role in both form and content of narratives.Corporeal narrative theories could be applied in re-considerations on King’s works.Body,as a narrative element,is a versatile role in King’s novels.Body could take a multiple role as pillars of narrative’s structure,as the plot-guiding threads,or as a story’s key contradiction.Therefore,in King’s novels,body is a theme forging metaphor which deepened the novels’ socialistic significance.However,esthetic value could be detected when a corporeal study is applied in King’s novels,where body related metaphor,symbolism and narrative are all magically mirroring to the social truth,the human-world relation,and the human nature,as well.Edificatory effects of King’s works not only created a high literary value,but also combined both literature and art aesthetics and political aesthetics as an entire union.The literary value of King’s fictions is embodied on King’s literary interest to modern families.In Carrie,“body problems” are the story’s major contradictions.Tangled with social factors as single parent,school violence and faith crisis,Carrie’s inner power forged her “body tragedy”,which is edificatory in exposing America’s ugly facts in education,religion and single parent family.So Carrie’s political aesthetic value locates in revealing those social facts.Dolores Claiborne has female body as its nuclear narrative element,Vera and Dolores’ s body oppression is a literary reflection of true womanhood in 1950 s.As victims of their marriages,their wound,both physically and psychologically,could speak for their efforts in resisting the male-oriented world,and also,could be the novel’s literary significance.In Misery,body narrative forged Annie’s character as a Siren,Annie and Paul’s bloody fight of body’s governance is the plot-driving contradiction,form which people could also detect Dolores Claiborne’s literature aesthetic value.The story displays King’s consideration on the femenity and masculinity imbalance in modern western world.Cujo’s tragedy is triggered by a couple’s “desire bodies”,their confrontation in both marriage and family economy is the result of American social crisis.The “body crisis” of middle class family members in Pet Semetary is the story’s key contradiction,which also illustrates King’s insight of social ethical dilemma.The literary value of King’s fictions is embodied in his reflections of political atmosphere and people’s mental suffering during the Cold war era.Firestarter takes body narrative as the major character forging technique.The novel have themes in exposing the government’s extreme body politics and criticizing America’s hypocritical democracy.Johnny’s body and identity entanglement is The Dead Zone’s story line,his pursuit of self-realization is a peek hole of people’s pessimism to the Vietnam War,the Watergate Scandal and the presidential election during the Cold War.The Mist’s theme is also contrasted by body narrative,which reflects people’s life and faith crisis under the Cold War military trials and environmental pollution.King’s deep concern to the future social status of human race also embodied the literary value of his fictions.As a crucial narrative element,body plays a significant role in character shaping and plot guiding in The Long Walk.The story has themes in shattering the hypocrisy of American Dream,and drawing ironical maps of human nature.King’s The Running Man created a dystopian society where human body is used as products for consuming,which reflects an empty spiritual world by criticizing the produce-consume mood of capitalism world.Cell signifies the reality that human body was already alienated by modern technology,the human resistance to industrial space is a symbol of human’s confusion when they are encountering the post-industrial age.Many factors contribute to the wide spreading of King’s fictions in popular cultural context.Postmodernism provides King his literature concept,as a breakthrough of the traditional Gothic novels and sensation novels,his corporeal narrative and other postmodern narrative strategies created the postmodern art and literature aesthetic value of his fictions.King’s fictions also have high political aesthetic value,for his stories are mostly reality-based.The “serious literature” characteristics are hidden,in King’s social metaphor,in his pursuing of gender balance,in his criticism to capitalism,and in his focalizations on the future of human race,as well.King’s fictions also have literature edification functions,when King,in his works,illustrates his considerations to the future of mankind,ethical values are significantly important for human being while they are confronting many future challenges.Generally,the literature aesthetic value which is embodied in King’s narrative forms,and the political aesthetic value which is embodied in King’s postmodern corporeal narrative intentions and edificatory functions,are artistically united.The literature and art aesthetic value of King’s fictions reinforced its political aesthetic value,then created “added values” to itself.The combination of both values is the reason for King’s universal fame in popular cultural context.