Research on the Narrative Spaces of James Joyce’s Novels——Taking The Dead as an Example

Abstract

This study addresses the narrative space of James Joyce in his work The Dead(1914), and explores how it collectively enhance the thematic impact of The Dead, showcasing the paralysis state of Dubliners, especially Gabriel. The novel explores the spiritual death, social norms and character loss, love and marriage, nationalism and cultural identity of Dubliners, leading to Gabriel’s psychological paralysis. This study provides an analysis of three narrative spaces of James Joyce’s The Dead, focusing on Gabriel Zoran’s spatial criticism theory. The above three narrative spaces include topographical space, chronotopic space and textual space. The topographical spaces refer to the Misses Morkan’s Annual Dance and the hotel, which play a vital role in shaping the characters and expressing the “paralysis” theme of the story. The three confrontations between Gabriel and three women shows the the motion state and the rest state between the four characters and the changing process of Gabriel’s spiritual world from paralysis to epiphany. The textual spaces like flashback and cinematography increase the artistic charm of the story’s language. The findings suggest that the paralysis motif is critical in The Dead. The three narrative spaces created by Joyce drive the plot and the character shaping. Zoran’s theory provides readers with a new way of reading and understanding text, which helps to enhance their spatial awareness, improve the text analysis ability and enrich the reading experience. The study recommends further research into the use of Zoran’s spatial criticism theory to examine Joyce’s other novels, in addition, comparative analysis, interdisciplinary research and qualitative and quantitative analysis of texts are also can be conducted in this field.