Diary Of A Bad Year In The Perspective Of The Postmodern Polyphonic World

“Polyphony” is a musical term, which is also a newly-significant concept broughtinto the novel theoretical by the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin. It is also Bakhtin thatexpounds his theory about the polyphonic novel which differs greatly from thetraditional monologue novel, which can represent a multiplicity of voices or ideas andit is only the polyphony that owns the ability to give the characters freedom.Diary of a Bad Year (2007) is Coetzee’s thirteenth novel, the first half of which,is written in the form of essay about Senior C’s argument concerning politics,democracy, and disgrace, etc. And the second part tells a story from the perspective oftwo different characters. The master of polyphonic music, Bach, who uses theexcellent polyphonic skill to perfect the music. Bahktin firstly introduces the conceptof polyphony into the novel theory system. While, the representative writer ofpost-colonialism, J.M.Coetzee, combines the creation of the literary works with themusic sense. Diary of a Bad Year not only demonstrates the vertical development ofthe story in the content and the writing forms, but also shows the horizontaldevelopment of the plot. The combined sound of three voices composes a perfect lyricwith ups and downs. Coetzee probes into the discussion of literature, politics, culture,nationalities and so many big events through the different narrative perspectives toconstruct the unique characters, story plots, and the narrative arts, which demonstratesthe unique appreciation of the literature beauty. In this dissertation, the Diary of a BadYear in2007of2003Nobel Prize Winner J.M.Coetzee will be studied in terms of thepolyphonic theory of Mikhail Bakhtin. What the dissertation tries to reveal is thedouble-voice and multi-voices existing in Diary of a Bad Year, through which “theself” and “the others” argue with each other. But how does those fragmentation ofdouble-voice represent their own consciousness?The present study is based on an incisive analysis of Diary of a Bad Year byCoetzee to make an analysis of double voiced discourse by using Bakhtin’s polyphonic theories. The study is composed of six parts: the first part is theintroduction part which gives a brief account of the author Coetzee, his life and hisworks. Chapter two is the relevant literature review of the novel at home and abroad.While Chapter three focuses on theoretical foundation, in which the thesis wouldbriefly establish the theoretical perspectives for analyzing the novel. In Chapter four,dialogism is the focus, which is the essence of the polyphonic theory. Bakhtin pointsout: the text is no longer the representation of the author’s consciousness, therefore itis in an independent status, so are the characters within. Dialogue in Bakhtin’sphilosophy is not confined to the ordinary vocal dialogues between fictionalcharacters, but extends to every possible dialogical relationship in the novel, includingthose between characters, characters and the author, and the given text and other texts,too. Therefore, an analysis goes to the relationship among characters: such as thegreat dialogues between Senior C and Anya, Anya and Alan, even Alan and Senior C,as well as the great dialogue between J.M.Coetzee and Senior C, and on the realitieswritten by the White writing with the Black presence. Besides, the micro-dialogue ofSenior C and Anya has also been discussed.Through the analysis of the relationship between the characters of the novel, wecan clearly sense the openness, indeterminacy of narratives represented by differentnarrators in the novel, and by using free indirect speeches, and by the author’sintention of structuring the novel as a whole utterance and a great dialogue, in whichas dialogue penetrates into every word of the character’s discourse, there must be acollision between different voices. Therefore, in Chapter five, the other feature ofpolyphony---indeterminacy has been widely illustrated through the discussion of theindeterminate genre, text structure, the plotting, the multiple themes, and theindeterminate constructing of the characters.To sum up, the representative writer of post-colonialism, J.M.Coetzee,challenges the traditional literary forms and literary concepts in Diary of a Bad Yearthrough using the patterns and manifestation of post-modernism. In the novel, theintertextuality association was implated within the comments on politics and narration,but the author did not focus on the deconstruction of the moral themes, but also didn’t give any hints on the form of the novel with prior meaning as usual, which makes thenovel Diary of a Bad Year full of the typical characteristics of post-modernism.Coetzee uses the dialogism and indeterminacy of his works to resist the ordinaryhistorical discourses’ and monologue writing mode, and the interpretation of Diary ofa Bad Year enables readers to find the social significance of the novel more clearly.