1.Importance of Setting in a Novel

Setting grounds your writing in the reality of place and depicts the theme of your story through powerful metaphor. Without setting, characters are simply there, in a vacuum, with no reason to act and most importantly, no reason to care. Without a place there is no story. Setting helps with plot, determines and describes character and gives metaphoric links to theme. Like the force in Star Wars, setting provides a landscape that binds everything into context and meaning.

2.Overview of novel

The word novel derives from the Italian word novella, which means a new story or a new thing. A number of critics have defined the word novel in a different way. Dr. Tillyard defines novel as “a novel is a not too unorganized, fictitious narrative in prose of at least, say, 20,000 words.” W.E Williams defines it as “a long narrative in prose detailing the actions of fictitious people.” In simple words, we can easily define the novel as a long story in prose. Novel is not a short story in prose; instead, it is actually an extensive and an illustrated account of series of events that happened right through the life of a character. It is an in-depth and all-inclusive autobiography of a character in the novel.

3.Uses of novel

Novels are not expected to be didactic, like tracts or morality plays; nevertheless, in varying degrees of implicitness, even the “purest” works of fictional art convey a philosophy of life. The novels of Jane Austen, designed primarily as superior entertainment, imply a desirable ordered existence, in which the comfortable decorum of an English rural family is disturbed only by a not-too-serious shortage of money, by love affairs that go temporarily wrong, and by the intrusion of self-centred stupidity.

4.小说文本构建与隐喻叙事_李勇忠pdf

从经典到后经典叙事学，小说文本的构建一直是学界关注的热门话题。作为重要的认知方式，隐喻是人类语言交际中重要的叙事手段，参与话语的建构。本文以小说为例，着重分析了隐喻叙事与语篇建构功能。