The Art Of Narration In "Revelation"

Born out of the prophetic writings, revelatorary literature is a special literary genre in the Bible. It prospered from the first half of the the second century BC to the second century AD. However, Revelation is the most perfect and special of them. It consists of a mixture genre of letter, prophecy and apocalypse. Thematically, it is about the end of history as well as man and the world's ultimate fate. Also it contains rich information about the end day. In position, it paralls Genesis and is the finale of the whole Bible. It is regrettable that, study about the narrative art of it is almost blank in our country, and there are so many deficiencies in the western papers. In order to analyse its special quality in the three-strategy of character, point of view and time with the narrative theories and supply new point of view for it's secular reading and understanding, the author chooses Revelation as study object and hopes that Revelation should not be a sealed scroll and can be understood by regular readers.This paper consists of three parts: the preface, the text and the conclusion. The preface describes the literature and time setings as well as the uniqueness of Revelation and defines the study object and the theoretical categories, then concludes the present studies both home and abroad and points out the possible reseach. Finally, the value of this study object and the purpose as well as methods of this paper are presented clearly.The text part cotains three chapters.The first chapter"character", consists of two parts. The first part concludes the developing track and qulity of"showing"and"telling". And then it comes to the conclusion that the two methods can't be treated as a better or worse question, because when an author depicts characters both of them are necessary despite their different functions.The second part analyses the use of the two strategies in Revelation and the characterization of Christ, God and the evil force. This part takes great time in analysing the Christ and takes all the evil chracters as a whole category. Then, this part gives such a conclusion that Christ is the center role, and its characterization is the richest so that the Christ can be called a"round character". By contrast the characterization of the evil is very simple.The second chapter,"point of view", is devided into two parts. Focusing on the u Uspensky's theory of point of view t, this two parts analyse the traits of Revelation's point of view from the four angles:"ideological-phraseological","spatial","temporal","psychological". The first part makes a conclusion of the point of view theory in modern narratology and points out the value of Uspensky's theory. The second part first analyses Uspensky's theory and the deficiencies as well as the strongpoints. Then this paper comes to the four-sphere of the point of view in Revelation. Finally, the part clearly points out that whenever at what circumstance, to keep aline with the justise force is very important for the narrator John. And the function of this trategy is stated in the end.The third chapter"time", consists of three parts. Both the first two parts use the same Genette's narrative theory to analyse the traits of the usual narrative time in Revelation. The first part focuses on the research of the conformities and unconformities of Revelation's story time and narrative time. And then it concludes that the story time and narrative time is in the same order for the most part. However, there are a few anachronies(flashback and flashforward) somewhere. The second part makes an analysis of narrative duration and frequency, points out that the contents of the two parts not only contain aethestic value but also serve the intention of the author. In the last part, an analysis of the uniqueness of the narrative time in Revelation is given by the using of traditional cosmic time theory. There is three-sphere time in Revelation: holy time, secular time and evil time, which transcend the linear time. But when the new heaven and the new earth come, evil time loses the value of existing on account of the defeat of Sadan's gang. While at the same time, the secular time gains the quality of holiness.Firstly, the conclusion part makes a conclusion of the basic opinion of the whole paper. Secondly, this part points out the important value of the classic narrative theory. And it also says the narrative theory dosen't die or comes out of time. The last part makes a simple comment on the value of the narrative study of Revelation.