An Analysis Of Spatial Narrative In Ceremony

As one of the representatives of Native American Renaissance since the1960s,Leslie Marmon Silko has gained great critical acclaim with her unique literarytechniques that blend Native American culture with Euroamerican literary form. Herdebut novel, Ceremony, published in1977is a typical example of Silko’s literarytalents. The novel presents how Tayo, a Native American veteran, seeks a spiritualhealing journey to get himself as well as the whole Indian tribe cured by virtue ofNative American tradition and ceremonies.Since the publication of the novel, critics have studied the novel from suchperspectives as eco-criticism, feminism, narrative techniques, reader-responsecriticism and space study. This thesis offers a tentative analysis of Ceremony from anew aspect—spatial narrative, in the hope that it will shed some light on a betterunderstanding of the novel. Spatial narrative was initiated into literary criticism byJoseph Frank in his seminal essay “Spatial Form in Modern Literature” in1945. Thecore concern of spatial narrative is to explore the functions of space in fiction, howwriters achieve the effects of spatial form in literary creation and how readersapproach fiction with spatial form with the principle of “reflexive reading”. Based ontheories of Joseph Frank and critics of later decades, the spaces in Ceremony can bedivided into three aspects: the topographical space (Pueblo Reservation), the textualspace with spatial form and the reader’s perceptual space engendered in the “reflexivereading” process. Through a careful study, this thesis is trying to give a tentative analysis of the functions of Pueblo Reservation in the overall narration of the story,the textual space Silko creates through various narrative techniques and the “reflexivereading” strategy readers employ in the reading process.The thesis falls into five chapters. The first chapter is an introduction in which anoverview of Leslie Marmon Silko and her writing career in general, criticism ofCeremony in particular, theoretical framework, and layout of the paper are given tolay a solid foundation for the following analysis. The second chapter deals with thetopographical space of the novel, namely the Pueblo Reservation: its steady functionin framing the setting in which modern Indian’s individual and communal crisis ispresented and its dynamic function of participating in the narration. The third chapterfocuses on the spatial form of the text, achieved mainly by such narrative techniquesas frame narrative and paratactic plot. The fourth chapter touches upon the reader’sperceptual space in the “reflexive reading” process. Applying Joseph Frank’s principleof “reflexive reading” to interpret the scattered images and the inserted sub-stories,this chapter demonstrates the reflexive reading process of the novel. The last partreaches the conclusion that Ceremony is a novel with spatial form achieved throughthe joint effects of the topographical space created by Silko, the narrative techniquesshe uses to give the narrative text a spatial form and readers’ reflexive readingprocess.