A Narrative Study On The Pictures In The Classic "Peter Rabbit" Series By Beatrix Potter

In recent years,the reading activities among children have been promoted successfully and a great deal of classic children’s literary works overseas have been introduced.An increasing number of Chinese parents have placed greater emphasis on cultivating the reading ability of their preschool children.Among the numerous children’s books and literary works,children’s picture books are undoubtedly the most suitable for them to read.Integrating pictures with texts,children’s picture books are characterized by the spatial and narrative features.Up to now,most studies on children’s picture books primarily focus on the creation and design of children’s picture books,the influence of Chinese and English children’s picture books on the teaching and self-reading in kindergartens and lower-grade of primary schools,the translation practice of English children’s picture books,etc..There are few studies conducted from the aspect of a specific theory.Moreover,the spatial narratology developed in recent years is applied more often to folk stories,novels,poets and films than children’s literature and picture books.Therefore,from the perspective of spatial narratology,this thesis is committed to analyzing the spatial narration methods of pictures in the classic “Peter Rabbit” series by Beatrix Potter,a very famous British writer of children’s books and illustrator,aiming to provide the books with an academic interpretation.Grounded on the theory of spatial narratology,this thesis selects the pictures respectively in The Tale of Peter Rabbit,The Tale of Benjamin Bunny and The Tale of Two Bad Mice as the research objects,compares the narration methods of single picture and successive pictures in them,and analyzes how these pictures are temporalized in space to achieve the purpose of narration so that readers have a deep sense of the visual fluency.The major findings in this thesis are as follows.Either a single picture or successive pictures have some remarkable features,such as narration,a sense of space and involvement.Beatrix Potter displays a plot skillfully with a series of single pictures,and then a whole story with the sets of plots,in which contains the flow of time,the distance and the conversion of space,and the movements and emotion of characters and the coherence of plots are embodied perfectly so that readers can fit in the story easily.The advantages of the image narration in picture books are also fully reflected in promoting the passage of time,the action of characters and the development of plots.To sum up,the narrative study on the pictures in children’s picture books has important academic value in grasping the narrative methods,the construction of narrative clues,the temporalized spatial narrative and the features of narrative space in pictures;meanwhile,it enriches the exploration of children’s picture books to a certain extent,and offers theoretical basis and guidance for writers and critics so that pictures can be combined with texts perfectly.In addition,it is also beneficial to most parents.In the future parent-child reading,they can take advantages of pictures and texts more effectively to guide their children to read,which helps to improve children’s reading comprehension ability and promote the development of their cognition.