Journal of East China Normal University (Philosoph ›› 2013, Vol. 45 ›› Issue (2): 120-124.

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Narrative, Rhetoric and Time: On the Rhetoric of Repeating in Cao Naiqian’s Novels

HAN Lei   

  • Online:2013-03-15 Published:2013-05-21
  • Contact: HAN Lei
  • About author:HAN Lei

Abstract: Cao Naiqian’s novels have a distinctive language style. A great amount of repeating rhetoric is one of its characteristics. His repeating rhetoric has excellent effect on pushing forward the development of stories, revealing the subjects of poverty and ignorance, containing psychological implication in behaviors and displaying a special idea of time. It helps to reach a high level in the discourse model and narrative model. Moreover, repeating rhetoric implies the author’s concept of Chinese villages as a pre-modern place: time in Chinese villages is stagnant or circulatory, and rural peoples in the bottom of society are fatefully within the cycle of poverty and ignorance. This one-sided denial of the oriental civilization constitutes a serious disadvantage of the author’s position, which is originated from a blind worship of the western civilization.