Rhythmic Narrative In Monologues Of Long Day's Journey Into Night

Owing to its expressive presentation of characters'complicated mentalities and emotions, Long Day's Journey into Night (LJN) has been widely regarded as a masterpiece of Eugene O'Neill. Critics interpret this play from various perspectives including biographical, historical, psycho-analytical, and structural approaches. However, the development of theories may offer new perspectives for literary criticism. This thesis argues, in light of narrative analysis, that the Rhythmic Narrative in the monologues of the play helps to reveal the theme of emotional isolation effectively.Narrative analysis has outgrown its exclusive discussion of narrative fiction and begins to marry other genres (besides novels) of literature, and even other artistic forms. Dramatic Narratology is still at the beginning, but as drama is one of the oldest forms of literature, the importance of dramatic narrative is evident. The development of Narratology has been closely related to the breakthroughs in literary criticism. Naturally, the development of dramatic Narratology will not be separated from dramatic theories and criticisms. Since approaches based on Rhythm of Drama are aimed at clarifying how the playwright manipulates various elements of drama to convey his final aim in creating the play, this thesis combines narrative analysis with the approaches highlighting Rhythm of Drama to analyze the rhythmic features in the monologues of LJN to explore how the Rhythmic Narrative presents the theme of emotional isolation.The Rhythmic Narrative discussed in this thesis is more than the relationship between story time and narrative time. Instead, it lies in every aspect of narrative. However, as the characters'complicated mentalities and emotions are most strongly presented in the monologues of the play, this thesis concentrates on the rhythmic features of the monologues of LJN, including the rhythmic distribution of the monologues, the repeated Unreliable Narrative and frequent alternations of focalization. In light of narrative analysis, they constitute important means of characterization and point to the playwright's final aim in creating this play.The Rhythm of Drama, like the rhythm of any other forms of art, is "the sequent and measurable changes of different elements of drama, and all these changes constantly and increasingly stimulate the audience's attention and bring it to the artist's final aim1". Rhythms exist in almost every basic aspect of drama like settings, choices of words (repetition of the pronunciations, words, and phrases), alternations and length of dialogues, language strategies, attitudes and gestures of characters and styles. Rhythm is one of the inherent elements of drama. It is made up of several ingredients including the alternations, repetitions and pauses in dialogues, settings, actions, etc. In the sense of narrative analysis, rhythm reflects the pace of the plot and stirs emotional responses within the readers (audience) with changes of its own, so it is the ligament between the play and the readers (audience).This thesis, therefore, directs the study to the rhythmic features of the characters' lengthy monologues from the perspective of narrative analysis, and it is aimed at demonstrating the theme of emotional isolation via such rhythmic arrangement of narrative. It points out that Rhythmic Narrative is an important means of characterization in LJN and that emotional isolation, the deepest tragedy of the Tyrone family, has been embodied artistically and fully through the playwright's application of Rhythmic Narrative. Therefore, the Rhythmic Narrative is crucial for the artistic achievement of O'Neill's masterpiece, LJN.