Study On The Narration Of The Fables In Zhuangzi

Zhuangzi, as a chief representative of the Taoist scholars of the Pre-Qin Dynasty, created a lot of fables of great literature value with his distinguished literature talents. Fables are narrative literature. So it is significant to study the fables in Zhuangzi with the theory of narratology in the research of Zhuangzi. However, the previous scholars didn't pay much attention to this point. Therefore, this thesis, having the texts of Zhuangzi as its base, taking the Pre-Qin Dynasty narration as its research background, and the theory of the west narratology as its theoretical foundation, attempts to make a relatively deep and overall analysis of the narration of the fables in Zhuangzi so as to discover its significance in the Pre-Qin narration, even in the Chinese narration tradition.The thesis consists of three parts: the introduction, the body, and the conclusion.The part of introduction is about the motivation of choosing the topic and the perspective of viewing it.The part of body contains four sections, which are the theoretical investigation into the narration of Zhuangzi's fables.Section One is about the theories of fables in Zhuangzi.Firstly, this section analyzes Zhuangzi's arguments on fable-like speech, authoritative speech and first-person speech in the text of "Yuyan", "Tianxia", and "Waiwu". Then, the conclusion is drawn: fable-like speech, authoritative speech, and first-person speech are fables we refer to today. The fable-like speech and authoritative speech refer to the tale itself. And the first-person speech is the comment made by the author himself, which tells the moral of the fable. The three parts form an organic whole of the fable.The nature of the fables in Zhuangzi is to "comment with outsiders' mouths". Inlight with the theory of narration, "comment with outsiders' mouths" is today's "creation". The fables in Zhuangzi are to metaphorize and prove the profound, wide, and rich system of thoughts of Zhuangzi through fabricating stories of human beings and entities with life or without life.Section two is about the narration modes of Zhuangzfs fables.This section focuses on the narration modes of the fables in Zhuangzi. Mode one is the narration time of overview plus scene. Events of major significance are represented with dramatic scenes. And events with minor significance are represented with overviews. The basic structure of the narration is constructed by presenting the overviews and scenes by turns. Mode two is the narration situation of the "neutral almighty" type of the author. This type of narration situation makes the story full of unexpectations with changable and rich plots.Section three is the fable world at Zhuangzi.This section firstly describes the fable world of Zhuangzi by taking the characters of the stories as clues. The characters in Zhuangzi's fables fall into three classes. Class one includes gods, which can be divided into two sub-classes: the inherent god, and the god changed from a natural man. Class two includes human beings which can be further divided into two sub-classes: the created men, and one is the historical men. Class three includes things, which can be further divided into three sub-classes: animals, plants and the things without a life. Then the narration strategies are studied: breaking the order of space and time, breaking though the circles of god, man, and ghost, and bestowing artistic life on animals, plants and the things without life.Section four studies the status of narration of Zhuangzfs fables.This section illustrates the status of the narration of Zhuangzi's 'fables in the Pre-Qin, even the traditional Chinese narration from two perspectives: One is the consciousness of narrative creation. Consciously, Zhunagzi made artistic creation in thecourse of writing the fables and spreaded his philosophy in the created stories. His intelligence in life is exhibited through the created plots. The other is the innovation of the narration mode. Before Zhuangzi, the pre-Qin narration used to take the n...