A Study Of Narrative Strategies In James Robertson's And The Land Lay Still

As an important figure in contemporary Scottish Literature,James Robertson is renowned for his rich historical elements and stark political opinions.His fourth novel,And the Land Lay Still,records the lives of different people against the backdrop of a panoramic picture of political and cultural changes,where people with various identities facing different dilemmas.According to Robertson,the cures come from the connection among people,and the inheritance of the land.Based on Genette's narrative theory,this thesis is aimed to scrutinize how the author embraces history in literature through the analysis of narrative levels,narrative time,narrative focalizations and narrative words.Generally Speaking,the work is divided into two narrative levels:the five separate yet interwoven stories serve as diegeses,while the events told in those character's narrative are called metadiegeses,which have different relationships with the narrative acts.In order to make the novel more readable,Robertson tightens the connection among different stories as well as the stories inner self by adopting a non-chronological time order featuring anachrony and frequency of events.Moreover,his employment of three focalizations enables the novel to be multi-voiced and multi-dimensional,and the characters more vivid.Different viewing distances in this novel contribute to the diversity of narrative style,which combines the Scottish dialects and traditional story-telling.Through the exploration of its narrative strategies,this thesis expresses the author's concern about the status quo of modern Scotland,the inheritance to Scottishness for all time and his exploration of the road to Scotland's future.