29 Sections 1.3 and 1.4 have identified the foci of this thesis and the sample novels. The foci function as guidelines, and can be divided into a number of objectives somewhat different from the existing ones in the study of modernist fiction. One difference lies in the approach the present thesis takes, which is corpus stylistic and cognitive narratological. As will be shown in Section 2.1, this approach has not yet been applied extensively in Modernist Studies, and is therefore intended to be a contribution to the study of modernist fiction. Specifically, in the light of the similarities and dissimilarities between the two sample novels, this thesis aims to attain the following objectives:
1. Survey relevant literary linguistic theories about realism and modernism as a guide to the intended comparative study.
2. Uncover regularities—if any—or irregularities that underlie the construction of narrative space in the two sample novels.
3. Reveal the relations between manners of spatialisation and stream-of- consciousness style as well as temporal dislocations.
4. Record findings on modernist narrative style obtained through a corpus analysis and cognitive narratological interpretation, and consider difficulties encountered during the course of this quantitative-qualitative study.
5. Propose informed directions for studies of postmodernist fiction as future research also in a corpus-aided and cognitively-oriented approach.
In order to reach the above goals, the present thesis has been divided into five parts, each addressing one or two related topics. It is hoped that they can jointly profile important aspects of modernist narrative art. Their contents are briefly presented below.
Part 1 (the present chapter) has introduced some new or alternative foci on modernist fiction. After generalising about the features of modernist fiction as well as the status quo of Modernist Studies (1.1) and establishing the conceptual meanings of narrative art of fiction (1.2), Section 1.3 has singled out space, sequence, and stream of consciousness as three crucial dimensions of modernist fiction for a close analysis, while 1.4 has explained why The Good Soldier and To the Lighthouse have been
30 chosen as two sample novels for analysis. The current section (1.5) presents the thesis’s overall plan.
Part II (Chapter 2) first reviews briefly some existing critical approaches to Woolf’s major novels and Ford’s fictions as excellent examples of two varieties of modernist fiction, and then describes an approach that draws on principles and techniques of corpus stylistics as well as relevant theories of cognitive narratology for an informed narrative analysis.
Part III is the major part of this thesis, and comprises chapters 3 to 6. This proportion shows an emphasis on a study of an early modernist narrative style as a transitional one embodied in The Good Soldier. Within a framework of the stylistic theory of language variation and variety, and based on some narrative stylistic differences between modernist fictions, Chapter 3 proposes the existence of early and full-fledged versions of modernist narrative style. After a parallel survey of realist and modernist epistemological thoughts, Chapter 4 compares some stretches of discourse from Balzac’s Old Goriot, Dickens’s David Copperfield, Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, and those from Ford’s The Good Soldier. The close analysis demonstrates an economical or sketchy construction of the story-space in Ford’s novel with regard especially to depiction of setting. That way of establishing story-space is neither as elaborate or detailed as in the sample realist fiction which emphasises the importance of detailed spatial information to the achievement of an effect of verisimilitude, nor as primarily symbolic as in To the Lighthouse (as is confirmed in Chapter 7), which enhances the stream-of-consciousness effect. In this respect, the manner of spatialisation can be claimed to be defining of early modernist style marked by a mixed character.
To study the portrayal of character as another element in story-space, Chapter 5 builds a corpus stylistic and cognitive narratological model for character analysis, of potentially broad application. The use of the model helps to uncover that the focus of the characterisation in Ford’s novel is on characters’ mental states as important objects in the story-space. Chapter 6 constructs another literary linguistic model to facilitate the identification of a ‘maze’ as a pattern in the establishment of the discourse-space in Ford’s novel. The close analyses in this chapter reveal another
31 aspect of the novel’s mixed character: lexical cohesiveness and narrative disruption are shown to co-exist in the novel’s narrative sequence.
Part IV is organised discoursally in the form of Chapter 7, which examines four aspects of To the Lighthouse. Starting from a definition of the novel as a literary genre, 7.1 contrasts the language use and plot construction in the two sample novels. It shows the style of Woolf’s novel to be more poetic, while its plot is episodic, thus drastically deviating from realist style. By use of concordance techniques, 7.2 analyses the representation of the seascape as a symbolic setting of the novel, which facilitates the description of stream of consciousness, while 7.3 examines how the construction of character as a way of creating story-space differs here from that in Ford’s novel. A prototypical modernist distinction is perceptible in the representation of Lily’s free-floating and fanciful stream of consciousness. Then via a close discourse analysis of the novel’s opening, 7.4 identifies the movement of wave as one of the patterns underlying the construction of the discourse-space in Woolf’s novel. The pattern iconises a drastic shift of spatial attention between fluctuating emotions as a kind of non-linear narrative sequence which functions to represent characters’ stream of consciousness, and is thus characteristically modernist.
In Part V (Chapter 8) comes the thesis’s conclusion, which has two sections. 8.1 summaries what has been discussed in the previous seven chapters. Furthermore, through analysing the collocational patterns of Lighthouse as a keyword in Woolf’s novel and interpreting them from a cognitive linguistic perspective, this section establishes the correlation between shift in space shown in those patterns, temporal dislocations, and stream-of-consciousness effect. The finding explains, in a way, how juxtaposition of incongruous discourse-spaces contributes to the constitution of modernist narrative style. It has enabled the thesis to reach one of its main objectives, which is generating some insights into the features of modernist narrative style in a cross-disciplinary and collaborative approach. The idea of ‘a cross-disciplinary and collaborative approach’ will be explained in detail in Chapter 2. Section 8.2 recapitulates the findings on modernist fiction obtained by means of corpus stylistic analysis and cognitive narratological interpretation. Some difficulties encountered during the course of analysis are also recorded. On this basis, this section also describes the possibilities for future research on postmodernist fiction with a focus on
32 a character’s or narrator’s mind style in a corpus stylistic and cognitive narratological approach.
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