On The Narrative Construction Of Lolita From The Perspective Of Mindreading

This dissertation will analyze the narrative patterns of Lolita from the perspective of mindreading.It consists of three parts,namely “the unreliable narrative”,“the embedded narrative” and “the narrative gap”.The first chapter will combine mindreading with metarepresentation to investigate the construction of the unreliable narrative.By eliminating the source tag,the distribution of the mindreading and the implied reader,the narrator successfully cheats readers into believing his story.While the narrator can also be reliable when the source tag emerges and when he ceases to mindread other characters.The unreliable narrative reveals several significant facts that the authority of the narrator is dissolved,the author is trying to make his work a cognitively challenging one and the shift between reliability and unreliability endows the text with a sense of tension.The second chapter aims to decode the embedded narrative through mindreading.The embedded narrative can be studied microcosmically and macrocosmically.By decoding the microcosmic embedded narrative,Humbert’s mental predicament can be readily revealed.While the macrocosmic embedded narrative entails mindreading from different characters and shows Lolita’s mental development and the inducement of incest.The embedded narrative is able to uncover the hidden layer of the two protagonists from different characters,which make their full image known to all.The third chapter mainly focuses on the narrative gaps in Lolita.Those unnarrated stories,defined by Abbott as “shadow stories”,reside in readers’ minds,promoting the development of the whole narrative.In Lolita,by decompressing the compressed narratives,binding the narratives and creating narratives when narratives collide,readers are able to engage in the reconstruction of narrative.The narrative gaps not only demonstrate the ingenuity and richness of the novel but challenges readers cognitive ability.