Narrative Distance Control And Rhetorical Effect Of Vanguard Novels

Narrative distance,as an important concept in aesthetics and literary theory,is proposed by a famous American literary critic Wayne Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction.In the book,he pointed out that any reading experience involves subtle dialogue between the author,narrator,other characters,and the reader.He believes that a novel is essentially a system where the author controls his/her distance to the reader,only though which can the reader maintain aesthetic distance between himself/herself and the text,thus realizing ideal aesthetic reading experience mixed with morality,intellectual,emotion,etc.The emerge of vanguard novel in 1980s in China has released novel form from the shackles of content,subverting the traditional literary order,and presenting a new form completely different from the past.In such a form of trial,pioneer writers persist in various positive tests for the possibility of future development of literature,and narrators either from the perspective of time,space,public awareness,universal moral values,or mainstream aesthetic views,they always tend to deliberately maintain a long distance with the recipient.As an important step among many narrative strategies,the pioneer writers tend to hide the distance between narrator and narratee,narrator and characters,implied author and narrator etc.in the text.Theoretically supported by the narrative distance proposed in Booth’s The Rhetoric of Fiction,this topic mainly explores the narrative distance control and rhetorical effect embodied in vanguard novels created by domestic pioneer writers of 1980s.From the perspective of "distance",it carries out analysis and study on vanguard novels,giving a comprehensive and accurate analysis and elaboration regarding the distance control in vanguard novels,as well as a dutiful and detailed analysis on their rhetorical skills and methods,and then reasonably summarizes and further explores the rhetorical effect therein.This essay is mainly divided into three parts:The first part is introduction,which firstly explains the reason for choosing the topic and its research value,and then simply straightens out and summarizes the description on "distance" in the history of the aesthetics,introducing the "narrative distance" theory as well as its links with rhetorical effect.The second part mainly studies the narrative distance control in vanguard novels through texts analysis.In this essay,the distance in vanguard novels has been divided into the distance of outside time and space,and the distance of inherent cognition,morality,and psychology.Through such levels of analysis,the author describes the specific distance control method adopted by pioneering writers,and their effect such as art defamiliarization,the effect from hypocritical reality to subjective reality and so on.The third part focuses on argument for the view that in order to control readers’ reading experience,the distance control achieved through various rhetorical techniques applied in this essay is only to influence the readers’reading experience,specifically,it influences the relationship between each narrative subject and the relationship between narrative subject and recipient to realize restructuring of relationship between the implied author and the implied reader,which has subverted people’s usual acceptance thinking and mental set,and forced readers to completely dedicate themselves to recreation activities of the text,thus deepening the meaning and connotation of the novel,and meanwhile achieving aesthetic implication that the art of novel should have.The analysis on effective narrative distance control and rhetorical effect of vanguard novels not only requires further understanding and study on "narrative distance" theory,but also requires deeper insight into vanguard novels and pioneer writers.In other words,it will significantly enrich the current research findings of vanguard novels by doing so.