英语论文哪里有？《枕头人》探索了暴力、人性、作家责任等主题，引起国内外的广泛关注，因问世时间较短，国内外对其研究刚刚起步，且大多数学者从直面戏剧、爱尔兰性、舞台创作等角度探讨，很少涉及它的元叙述研究。
Chapter OneINTRODUCTION
1.1 Martin McDonagh and The Pillowman
1.1.1 Introduction to Martin McDonagh
Martin McDonagh is a British-Irish playwright,screenwriter,film director andproducer.The background of his early plays is all set around County Galway,the placewhere he spent his holiday in childhood.They can be further divided into two trilogies,“The Leenane Trilogy”and“The Aran Islands Trilogy.”The former includes TheBeauty of Leenane(1996),A Skull in Connemara(1997)and The Lonesome West(1997).The latter consists of The Cripple of Inishmaan(1996),The Lieutenant ofInishmore(2001),and The Banshees of Inisheer.Since McDonagh is not satisfied withthe third play,he does not let it be published.Since 2003,The Pillowman has causedmore sensation in London,New York and around the world.In addition,McDonagh’splays include A Behanding in Spokane(2010),Hangmen(2015)and A Very Very VeryDark Matter(2018).
McDonagh has also made great achievements in the film industry.In 2006,his SixShooters earned the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film at the 78th Academy Awards.In 2008,he wrote and directed In Bruges,a black comedy film,which earned him anomination for Best Original Screenplay at the 81st Academy Awards.In 2012,SevenPsychopaths,a criminal comedy complied and directed by Martin McDonagh wasreleased in the United States.Five years later,his drama-dark film Three BillboardsOutside Ebbing,Missouri(2017)won him Academy Award nominations for BestPicture and Best Original Screenplay for the film.
Chapter ThreeSTRUCTURE OF THE METANARRATIVE OF THEPILLOWMAN
3.1 Narrative Levels of The Pillowman
Diegetic level is the level at which an existent,event,or act of recounting issituated with regard to a given diegesis(Prince 20).The task of the previous narrativelevel is to provide a narrator or narrative framework for the next level.That is to say,acharacter from the previous narrative level becomes the narrator on the next narrativelevel(Zhao,“Distressed Narrator”102).In The Pillowman,the world where Katurianand the two policemen exist is at the previous narrative level,that is,the extradiegeticlevel.Meanwhile,Katurian and Tupolski play the role of narrator and narrate storiescreated by themselves.So the stories they narrate take place on a metadiegetic level.The two narrative levels form the metadramatic effect,which gives readers andaudience a sense of defamiliarization.In this chapter,the narrative level and its cyclicaltransgression narrative will be analyzed.
Chapter FourEFFECT OF THE METANARRATIVE OF THEPILLOWMAN
4.1 Defamiliarization Function of Metanarrative
Defamiliarization was proposed by Russian formalist literary theorist VictorShklovsky in 1917 in Art as Technique:“The purpose of art is to impart the sensation ofthings as they are perceived and not as they are known.The technique of art is to makeobjects‘unfamiliar’,to make forms difficult,to increase the difficulty and length ofperception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must beprolonged(16).”The process of defamiliarization is the process of creating complicatedforms.To break the fixed pattern of automated perception,breakthrough aestheticinertia,and give the receiving subject a sense of novelty and strangeness,artists mustcreate complex and difficult forms,not only breaking the norms and patterns of theoriginal form but also creating a unique artistic maze that is different from the previousexperience.In metanarrative works,the author no longer hides behind the textual world,but stands in the light and exposes the creative process to the reader.After seeing textsexposing how they are created,readers have to adjust their previous reading habits,sothe text has a sense of defamiliarization in front of them.
4.2 Blurring of the Boundary between Reality andFiction
In The Pillowman,the boundary between reality and fiction becomes blurred,andMcDonagh seems to make readers reexamine the fictionality and authenticity ofliterature,as well as the relationship between the two.Most studies on metanarrativeworks simply classify“truth”and“fiction”in the works,making it difficult todemonstrate the complex presentation of the“fictionality”of literary works in thisgenre.The theory of“possible worlds”proposes new perspectives on the essence offictionality in literary works.This chapter uses the theory of possible worlds as astarting point to analyze the authenticity and fictionality in The Pillowman,as well asthe relationship between the fictional world and the real world.
4.2.1 Fictionality of literature
The real world is just one of the many possible worlds,and the literary fictionalworld has an ontological status.The fictional world is not only a representation of thereal world but also a possible world that can be simulated or even realized(Doležel).The semantic category of fictional works not only includes a possible world but also a complete modal system,that is,the entire textual universe.The possible world providesus with a narrative cognitive model that transcends the boundaries of fiction andnon-fiction.When readers organize discrete textual information using differentcognitive models,they obtain the key to entering the text.The textual universe iscentered around its own real world,which is called the“text actual world”.
Chapter FiveCONCLUSION
As a play that utilizes meta-narrative techniques,McDonagh’s The Pillowmanpresents readers with a complex yet interesting narrative game.This thesis capturessuch a feature and turns to narrative theory to study its metanarrative techniques.Tologically present the study results,this part will first articulate the academic discoveriesand then bring out the limitations of this thesis so as to provide some feasible researchapproaches for the further study.
This thesis mainly probes into three problems in Chapters Two,Three and Fourrespectively,which are the narrator and narratee in the metanarrative of The Pillowman,the structure including extradiegetic level and metadiegetic level and the effect ofmetanarrative from the theoretical framework of Patricia Waugh and Zhao Yiheng’smetanarrative theory.Based on the systematic study in the above chapters,the academicdiscoveries are presented as follows.
First of all,Chapter Two finds out that the narrator in the metanarrative work hasstrong self-consciousness,which means that the narrator will point out the creativeprocess and emphasize his or her identity as the author.Katurian’s narrative breaks thetraditional narrative,and he enters his stories as a character.His contradictory wordsand actions prove that he is an unreliable narrator.Katurian’s self-consciousness andunreliable narrative remind the readers that it is necessary to interpret the story activelyinstead of blindly believing in the author.Moreover,the transboundary of the outernarratee into the internal narrative allows readers to participate more deeply in thislanguage game and feel the complexity of moral judgment standards for the charactersin the play.Just like the outer narratee plays an important role in affecting thedevelopment of the plot,the inner narratee is pivotal to the direction of the plot as well,as the inner narratee’s reaction may increase dramatic suspense and change thedevelopment.
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