A Study Of The Narrative Dynamic In The Remains Of The Day

A Nobel Prize winner,Kazuo Ishiguro is a Japanese British novelist born in 1954.One of his novel The Remains of the Day won the Booker Prize in 1989.Kazuo Ishiguro is skilled in applying the first-person narrator to promote the progression of his literary works.In The Remains of the Day,he also employs the first-person retrospective narrator to show Stevens’ meditation over his profession and life.According to James Phelan’s narrative progression,narrative dynamic is the key to the formation of the progression.It refers to the various dynamic that can cause,maintain,control and adjust the narrator’s narration,with the plot dynamic,the discourse dynamic and the readerly dynamic being the components.Therefore,this thesis analyzes the narrative dynamic of The Remains of the Day from the perspective of plot dynamic,discourse dynamic and readerly dynamic.The first part of this thesis briefly introduces Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and James Phelan’ narrative dynamic,as well as the literature review and research aims.The second part is the main body.Chapter one exposes the plot dynamic from the instabilities of the plots.The author points out further the instabilities caused by the conflicts between and within characters,between the characters and the environment.By exploring the inner and outside conflicts of the characters,the author reveals characters’ psychological growth of self-examination and self-affirmation in the narrative progression.Chapter two reveals the discourse dynamic of the novel through the tensions brought by the interaction among the narrator,the readers and the implied author.There are the tensions between the narrator and readers,the implied author and readers.In this novel,the tensions between the narrator,Stevens and the readers are brought by Stevens’ reliable and unreliable narration over some events.The tensions between the implied author and the readers are caused by their different knowledge and cultural values.Those tensions are strengthened or reduced with Stevens’ narration in the progression.Finally,the implied author’s narrative intentions become more clear to the readers.Chapter three discusses the readerly dynamic of the novel through the readers’ three kinds of judgments.It is the implied author,the narrator,the readers,and the characters’ dynamic interpretations of the text in the novel.Among them,the interpretive judgment is the basis,an explanation and clarification of the story of the text.The ethical judgment is the judgment over ethical relationship among characters.While the aesthetic judgment is the reader’s aesthetic understanding of the novel.Thus those judgments promote the narrative dynamic in the level of readerly dynamic.The third part is the brief summary of the thesis,with its innovation,research significance and shortcomings.With the relatively new research angle,this thesis tends to deepen the readers’ understanding of this novel and provides scholars with a reference for analyzing specific literary works by narrative dynamic.The author hopes that it can provide a relatively new interpretation for the novel,further enhance the appreciation of the work,and expand our research horizon.