A Space Narratology Study On Lauren Groff’s Florida

Lauren Groff,as the New York Times bestselling author,has been awarded the2018 National Book Award Finalist for her latest story collection Florida.The stories are mostly related to children and families overcoming the fierce deadly things of Florida.Each story of the collection is set against the background of Florida.Groff writes about loneliness,rage,family,and the passage of time.With great talent in writing,Groff presents artistically moments of happiness and loss,hope and despair,love and fury.Narration is an art of time and space.However,previous studies put more focus on time than space.The thesis tries to interpret the story collection from the perspective of spatial narratology.By analyzing characters and plots in the stories,it aims to illustrate the spatial structure in narration and its role in the revelation of the theme of the story collection.By applying Gabriel Zoran’s spatial theory,the thesis interprets the story collection from aspects of topographical level,chronotopic level and textual level.At topographical level,the story collection constructs a living space,both inside and outside space in narration,showing the lack of love and security,dread and rage in living space and the human fragility in front of natural disaster.The synchronic relation and diachronic relation are discussed on the chronotopic level,disclosing the character’s bravery overcoming the fierce deadly things and the character’s struggle of running away from those fierce dreadful things.At the textual level,the story collection constructs a fierce environmental image space by the selectivity of language and a connected story space by following the linearity of text in the story,representing people’s helplessness and dread in front of the natural things and the character’s hope and despair when faced with challenging living conditions.In conclusion,based on Zoran’s spatial theory,the thesis presents and discusses the unique spatial structures in the narration of the story collection,which offers a special perspective to read and understand the story collection.