Narrative Experiments In Ali Smith’s There But For The

Ali Smith is an up-and-coming English writer whose works have been watched,praised and nominated for various literary awards such as Booker and Orange sincethe publishing of her debut in1995. Her novels are characterized by experimentalproperties such as narrative fragments, changing narrator and multiple points of view,word play, obscure narration and open ending, dissipating plot and narrative modessubverting the traditions. There but for the is Ali Smith’s latest work that has beenhighly evaluated and is very popular with the readers since its publication in2011.If the experimental techniques applied by Smith to her best-known novelAccidental are more mature than those used in her second novel Hotel World, herexperimentation in There but for the have gone to another realm. In this novel, theauthor goes a further step to desalinate the plot, create disparate characters, andexplore more profound and lasting themes…The thesis consists of an introduction, three chapters and a conclusion. Theintroduction provides a summary of the origin and development of the literaryexperimentalism, some typical features of experimental fictions and something aboutthe author of the novel Ali Smith, general characteristics of her works and researchobjects of the thesis. The first chapter focuses on the author’s experimentation innarrative forms: first, the contrasts and comparisons with traditional narrative forms interms of characterization, formula of telling the story and its elements will bepresented. Then techniques adopted by the author to break the linear plot developmentwill be discussed, including discontinuity in narration and insertion of accidentalevents and arbitrariness into the plot. Lastly, the temporal and spatial structures of thenovel will be analyzed and how they are subverted and reconstructed into a whole bythe author will be discussed in detail. Chapter Two is the analysis to variousexperimental narrative techniques adopted in the novel which includes collage,montage, parodies, the inversion of plot and mélange of genres. Chapter Three is asurvey of the experimental artistic presentation of the novel, including the language play, word play, the unreliable narrator in the novel and the meta-fictionalcharacteristics of the novel. Lastly, the artistic effect and significances of Smith’sexperimental techniques will be discussed in the conclusion combined with thethemes presented in the novel.