摘 要

1. Introduction 1

1.1 Author’s background 1

1.2Brief glance of Agatha’s work 1

2. Literature Review 4

3. Analysis of the Narrative Style of Agatha Christie’s Novels 7

3.1 Brief depiction of Agatha’s Novel 7

3.1.1 Narrative sequence and story sequence 7

3.1.2 “Most Impossible” Model 8

3.2Detail illustration from discourse formation 9

3.2.1Space narration 10

3.2.1.1The geography space 11

3.2.1.2Space and Time Space 12

3.2.1.3The Text Space 13

4. Conclusion 14

References 16

Acknowledgments 17

Abstract

Known as the world-famous “queen of the detective novels”, Agatha Christie innovates a golden age of Euro-American detective fiction, called as the Three majoring literary masters of the world with Conan Doyle and Seicho Matsumoto. She is a very productive writer who fully imbued narrative charm in her works, but its light literature classification fails to attract the attention of literature critics and reviewers, even though there pops up many great classic works.

Suspension is an essential part of reasoning fiction. The process of solving a case is a work of solving the suspense one by one. A large scale of readers are attracted by the usage of suspence in reasoning fictions. There are generally two narrative modes in Agatha Christie’s reasoning novels: the "most unlikely" mode which means the person most unlikely to be the murderer is the criminal in the case. Violence and bloodshed are not common in Christie’s novels, and their reasoning reveals women’s warmth everywhere. Therefore, Christie’s novels are called "A-style" comfortable reasoning. It is precisely because of this characteristic that the female writer's novels are not only loved by male readers. But also attract a large number of female readers. In addition, Christie’s reasoning novel is popular because its narrative structure has the characteristics of narrative sequence and story sequence, which are closed and open, similar to the form, different in the plot, independent narrative, causal narrative and so on.

Therefore, this paper will reveal the secret of Agatha Christie’s long-lasting novel. Overall illustration of Agatha Christie’s succession and breakthrough towards classical detectives will be given and horizon dimension will be applied too analyse novel’s integrate structure. Then vertical dimension will be be used plus narration time and narration space ...etc to understand the discourse formation. the most important is the applying of traditional organization of novels which named as “crime-search-deduction-riddle solving”. But in more work, she modifies this pattern to create a framework more suitable for the characters and plots of the novel. Miss Marple's particularity makes the series have two suspense. The credibility of detectives and the detection of cases becomes two parallel clues. In the timing of the novel, Christie’s numerous novels have appeared the phenomenon of wrong time. In these novels, she cleverly uses the method of prosecution, showing the problem of distance and direction in the wrong time. From the point of narrative time, her plots can be split into "unfolding" plot and "turning" plot. The turning plot follows the past and announces the future, which alleviates the danger of redundant unfolding plot. Finally, Agatha Christie’s novels usually use detective inquiry to solve cases, so the form of dialogue has grown up to be a prominent feature of her novels. In order to diversify the narrative means, besides statements and dialogues, nursery rhymes, letters and pictures are designed to promote the development of the case or to help readers think. Ultimately, summarizing the complete narration style and digest its practical meaning.

Keywords: Classical detective; Narration time; Space narration;Narration style

中文摘要

阿加莎·克里斯蒂是风靡全球的“侦探推理小说女王”，是欧美侦探小说的黄金时代的开创者。与柯南道尔、松本清张共同位列世界三大推理文学宗师。著作非常丰富，叙述的魅力在她的小说中得到了全面的体现，但是碍于其通俗文学的分类，即使涌现了许多优秀的经典之作，但是侦探小说仍未引起文学评论家、批评家的重视。因此本文将从叙述风格这一角度分析阿加莎·克里斯蒂小说经久不衰的秘密。

推理小说的标配便是“悬念”，读者解开悬念的过程便是破案的过程，推理小说因悬念的特殊魅力而收获更多读者。最不可能模式是阿加莎克里斯蒂推理小说中常见的叙事模式，是指往往最不受怀疑的人却是凶手。暴力、血腥并不是克里斯蒂作品的主要元素，而是充满女性的温情，所以树立了阿式舒适推理的风格，得益于此，阿加莎的作品收获了众多男性书迷与女性读者。克里斯蒂小说的风靡还得益于小说叙事结构，采用了叙事时序和故事时序的共存，具有封闭又开放，类似结构、多样情节、叙事独立、因果叙事等特色。

故事时序同时存在，既封闭又开放，形式相似、情节不同，独立叙事，因果叙事等特点文章将从整体的角度详述阿加莎·克里斯蒂对古典侦探小说的继承与突破，从水平维度分析小说的整体结构。进而采用纵向维度，从叙述时间以及叙述空间等方面分析阿加莎小说的话语形成。首先，“犯罪—侦查—推理—破案”的模式在克里斯蒂在部分小说中频繁出现，但是，阿加莎也在不断完善修改这种模式，力图创造出更贴合小说人物和故事的架构，特别的马普尔小姐让该系列多了两个悬疑，侦探可信度和破案并肩行动提供线索。在叙述时间上，故事可划分为展开式情节与转折性情节，追述过去和诉说未来是转折性情节的两大特征，减轻了过度冗杂的弊端。最后，破案环节多应用侦探询问的方法，突出了对话形式。叙述手段的多样通过陈述、对话以及童谣、信件、图画等推动情节进度、激发读者思考。最后，阿加莎•克里斯蒂小说的破案环节，最后总结整体叙述风格并且分析其虽侦探小说的实际意义。

关键词：古典侦探小说；叙述时间；叙述空间；叙述风格

Introduction

1.1 Author’s background

In the history of world popular literature, Arthur Conan Doyle of England, Agatha Christie of Japan and Matsumoto Seicho of Japan are called the three masters of world reasoning fiction. Agatha Christie is admired as "the golden age of detective fiction in Europe and America". Agatha Christie was from England in 1890. She has consistently been called "Queen of Reasoning" and is one of the representatives of classical detective fiction. Unlike contemporary detective stories or crime stories, classical detective stories do not pursue the bizarre plot of crime or the excitement of the process of solving a case. The focus of the novel is usually the rigorous reasoning process and the overall background of the occurrence and detection of the case. Agatha Christie, as a landmark figure in detective fiction, has always been admired by later generations, not only because of her bizarre plot conception, but also owing to her unique narrative skills. Narration is the description of the story. The novel is the one that the author tells the reader. Narration can be seen as the process of the creation of the novel. Narrative plays great integrity to the substance and formation of the novel. Novels’ success is greatly allied in its nature narrating. Conventional narration is easier than the narration of detective novels. Christie's detective fiction has a painstaking narrative and novel structure, which can make the readers immerse themselves in it. Intertwined narrative structure, the fiction is constantly out of imagination but within the bounds of reason.

1.2Brief glance of Agatha’s work

It was because Agatha Christie described crime so gracefully, the novel so vividly, the plot so attractive to readers, that many of her works were made into films, and her contribution to the stage play is worth mentioning. Too many people are ready to understand Agatha's writings: "There are many evils hidden in a quiet life", to reflect on themselves and to realize life. It's not just the pleasure of reading. Agatha Christie's works have brought the audience into three-dimensional sensory enjoyment.

Although the golden age of detective reasoning fiction is over, good detective fiction still emerges in endlessly, readers still love this literary form, and scholars have never stopped studying detective reasoning fiction. Early literary critics mainly focused on the value of such reasoning fiction and the reasons for its popularity; another group of researchers focused on the social implications of detective fiction, focusing on the relationship between detective fiction and social politics, economy and culture; in addition, some scholars focused on the story construction and narrative features of detective reasoning fiction. Points of study, they focus on the art of narration, trying to explain why this singular narrative can attract readers. As the queen of detective reasoning fiction, Agatha Christie is not only concerned about the interesting nature of detective reasoning fiction, more and more people begin to study the connotation and value of her work.

At present, the study of Agatha Christie's fiction can be roughly divided into three types: the first type is the study of Agatha Christie’s solo work, or the commentary and analysis of a work by newspapers and magazines. Start with one or more characters, or study the foreshadowing or clues of a work, and study the plot of a story in detail. The second type focuses on the personalities in Agatha Christi’s novels. At present, Wang Anyi’s most authoritative representative work in China is The World of Agatha Christie, a magnificent family, released in november 2006. The book centers on Polo and Miss Marple, and analyses the archetypal characters in Agatha's novels, so as to study human nature and character psychology. The third goes to study the social significance and local customs contained in the novel through the understanding of the story and Agatha Christie’s life, usually through the analysis of social background. However, there are relatively few studies on Agatha Christie’s reasoning fiction from the perspective of neonatology, and some scholars focus on the analysis of narrative techniques and forms, but relatively speaking, they are not very in-depth. Hence, understanding Agatha’s work from the view of narration techniques is typical worthy and functional, important. This paper explores the narrative strategies in Agatha's novels, such as narrative structure, narrative perspective, narrative discourse, and so on, in order to make a few useful supplements for the academic circles in the study of detective reasoning fiction.

2. Literature Review

Agatha Christie is one of the representatives of classic detective story who is very productive and wins a nickname of “detective queen”. Different to contemporary detective novels or criminal novels, classic detective stories put high emphasis on seriously detective progress and the overall background of the case, while contemporary detective stories focus on weird circumstances of a crime or thrilling process of detection. Detective novels derived from Europe and American, thrilled in Japan, and embrace potentials in China. Through the past years of exploring, Chinese detective works are gradually increasing in China along with the adaption of TV series and new-invited foreign novels. However the research concerning detective novels are short in China for its light literature type. Below are existing papers about detective novels from home and abroad which vary greatly in depth and quantity.

Chinese detective fans of Agatha Christie are not limit, it reaps a pile of readers since the introduction of her work, but the related researches are few for its light literature type which receives little attention from scholars and the critics. Although the research history of Agatha Christie is short and obvious, scholars in recent years are putting efforts to implement researches of Agatha Christie and her wonderful works, which brings us enough material to attain basic information and provides us the foundation for further analysis.