Natsume Soseki (なつめそぅせき) established his leading position in modern Japanese literature with his masterpiece I am a cat. This paper aims to explore the unique narrative features of I am a cat, such as defamiliarization, carnival, pun and irony.

Keywords Natsume Shushi, I am a cat, narrative characteristics

Wenxiamu Sosuke, whose real name is Kinnosuke, "enjoys a high status in the history of modern Japanese literature, and is called' the great national writer'. He has high attainments in both eastern and western cultures. He is not only a British scholar, but also good at haiku, China's poems, calligraphy and painting. When writing novels, he is good at using antithesis, overlapping sentences, humorous language and novel forms. His precise and subtle description of personal psychology opened the trend of later private novels (わたくし novels). There are many literati under his door (such as Sanhao and Sita). ), and Akutagawa Ryunosuke is also his support. " (1) 1905, 38-year-old Natsume Sasaki finished "I am a cat" and published it in Du Fu magazine in a serial way, which made him famous and officially entered the literary world. His main works are I am a cat (my cat), Brothers (Fang), Young Man's Grass, San Si Bo and From Now on. Natsume Sasaki's masterpiece "I am a Cat" shows readers the life of intellectuals such as Yayoi Kusama, Mi Ting, John and the capitalist represented by Jintian from the perspective of a cat, banters and criticizes the dark and decadent society and vulgar and boring novel characters, describes the funny and ugly scene with unique irony, and achieves a carnival comedy effect. A unique omniscient perspective According to the narratology theory, "the narrative perspective is the focus of the narrator's narrative from what angle and in what way", "In the narrative perspective, the first question is the narrator's person, that is, whether he narrates as a bystander in the novel or uses the character' I' in his works" (2)P256 "You can see what the characters see through' I' or' He'. It is greater than the character's vision ... which shows that the narrator is "omniscient". (3) In 3)P257 "I am a cat", the narrator is a cat with an omniscient perspective and is narrated by "I". The cat in the novel not only acts as a narrator and critic of human events, but also participates in a series of activities in the cat's own world. 1. Cats describe people's world. This is the place where novels spend the most articles. The purpose of writing "I am a cat" is not to really write about the life of cats, but to describe people and reflect their social life with cats as the carrier. Throughout the book, the main characters in the novel are Kushami, a middle school English teacher, a mysterious museum that studies aesthetics, a bachelor of science, a person who loves poetry and drama, a unique immortal who is obsessed with philosophy and Zen, an industrialist Jin Tianyi and a lobbyist Suzuki. The location of the characters' activities is mainly Kumisha, the home of the cat's owner, which provides sufficient conditions for the cat to start narration. Of course, the cat also moves the location of the story through its own outing, so that the novel will not confine the scene to the same place as the classical drama follows the "three unifications", such as the cat sneaking into Jintian's home, thus extending the character image and lifestyle of Kindaichi Hajime's family and sneaking into the bathhouse, etc. 2. The cat describes the cat's world. The cat's own world is also an indispensable part of the novel, such as the cat eating rice cakes, the funny scenes of catching mice, and the cat's usual sports, such as catching cicadas and walking around bamboo walls. In addition, several other cats are written in the novel, mainly the "Sanmao Girl" of the hostess's family and the "Old Black" of the coachman's family. The world of cats is also rich and colorful. The attachment of the male cat of the Kumisha family to the "Three Cats and Girls" has never lost to the admiration of human men and women. The book says, "Her round back is beautiful and has reached the limit of curve. Her tail is curled properly, and the sitting posture of her legs, and the graceful movements of her shoulders and ears with sadness from time to time, I simply don't know how to describe it. Especially when she sits in the warm sunshine, she is gentle and elegant. Although her posture is dignified and quiet, her hair smoother than velvet makes people feel that it is constantly shaking in the spring sun, even if there is no wind. " (4)P26 Another example is Lao Hei, the sturdy male cat of the coachman's family, who despises Kumisha and Kumisha's cat, which undoubtedly satirizes the cruelty of human society. 3. The cat's narrative style. In the novel, cats describe human activities and cats' own activities by listening, watching and thinking. We mainly discuss human activities here. In his doctoral thesis "A Study of Natsume Novels", Li Guangzhen thinks that the narrative style of cats in the first to sixth chapters of "I am a cat" is listening with ears. "From the story development of the novel, from the first chapter to the sixth chapter, the narrator's cat heard everything with its' ears': from the bedroom and kitchen of the host family to sneaking into the Jintian Mansion. (5) I don't quite agree with this. For example, in the fifth chapter, Kumisha's house was stolen, and the cat mainly described it with "eyes": "My attention is all focused on my eyes, as if my soul is about to fly out of my eyes." (6)P 124 The cat thought Mr. Zhang was handsome, and almost mistook him for Leng Yue. Cats can describe human words and deeds through their ears and eyes, but the writer also invented a unique skill for cats, "mind reading", which tells how to convey human inner thoughts. " Some people may wonder how a cat can describe its owner's mind in detail. In fact, such a thing doesn't matter to our cats. I know how to read minds. You asked me when I learned it. You'd better not ask such unnecessary things. Anyway, I know. When I crawled on human knees to sleep, I said that my soft fur coat was gently attached to people's stomachs. So I immediately generated an electric current, and what happened in his stomach was clearly reflected in my mind. Therefore, when Misha, who bears a grudge, tried to peel off the cat's skin to make a vest, the cat immediately realized his idea and broke out in a cold sweat. Second, the defamiliarization of satirical art is the viewpoint put forward by Russian formalist Kraffszky. Shklovsky believes that defamiliarization means making familiar objects strange, making readers feel the novelty of art in the process of appreciation, and completing aesthetic activities through a certain aesthetic process. "The fundamental purpose of literary and artistic creation is not to achieve a aesthetic comprehension, but to achieve a sense of beauty, which depends on. (8)P45-46 In I'm a Cat, the author uses many defamiliarization techniques to achieve the effect of irony. First of all, in some dishes, the author often uses defamiliarization techniques, such as changing the position of daily expressions. For example, when Mi Ting went to a restaurant to eat, he deliberately referred to "beef potatoes" as "bell potatoes and horse meat beef"; It is planned to build rare items, such as "peacock tongue"; There are some non-food terms transferred to food, such as "Tian Ming Tone", "Ye Wan Tone" and "Oak Noodle Restaurant". In addition, I think the author breaks the reader's "habitual expectation" by frustrating the reader's "expectation", so as to separate the events that are considered to be causal and achieve good defamiliarization effect. According to Hume's point of view, "The mind is driven by habits or customs, and it is believed that these two things are related and will be combined forever ... We are determined by habits and expect another thing from the appearance of one thing", (9)P387 "In Hume's view, objects are not necessarily related, and opinions are linked in people's minds through association. This connection comes from repetition, custom or habit. These views often come together, and one of them appears, prompting the other to appear. There is no logical necessity here, only psychological necessity, which depends on experience. " (10) In the second chapter of P389, John broke the reader's habitual expectation when telling his experience of jumping into the river. When John plucked up his courage and jumped into the river without nostalgia, after a while, she didn't find herself soaked or suffocated. It turned out that she went in the wrong direction and jumped into the bridge. Another example is the sixth chapter, Fan Ting, who talked about his lovelorn experience. He spent the night in a teahouse in the mountains and fell in love with his master's beautiful daughter. "'She tied such an elegant high bun ...'", (1 1)P 160 The next day, when Fan Ting woke up and looked out of the back window, he found a bald man washing his face. Speaking of whether this bald man is an old man or an old woman in that family. Fan Ting said that the bald man was the girl. She was wearing a wig. At this time, the audience's original expectations were immediately dispelled, and no one wanted to associate bald men with beautiful girls, resulting in a defamiliarization effect and making the novel extremely dramatic. 3. Having fun with cats: The comedy effect of carnival Carnival Poetics is an important part of Bakhtin's theory. In his monograph "rabelais's Creation and Folk Culture in the Middle Ages and Renaissance", he discussed the carnival phenomenon in human laughter culture, folk carnival culture and literature. When analyzing rabelais's novels, Bakhtin mainly used three carnival aesthetic features: exaggeration, degeneration and duality. Bakhtin's carnival theory is related to his super-linguistics and dialogue theory, both of which emphasize dialogue and openness, and the boundary between folk and official, elegant and popular is temporarily eliminated. When analyzing the carnival culture, Bakhtin pointed out that in the carnival and carnival ceremony, the big man was crowned and the little man was crowned. The theory of carnival poetics is also applicable to I am a cat. In the novel, the cat is a nobody relative to the human being represented by Misha in bad karma, while King Misha in bad karma is a big shot representing power and hegemony, while the female cat is a "white snake" and. "Nothing is more heartless than human beings", "Humans don't know what ownership is at all", and Kussami's cats also complain: "They always take away what should belong to us by their own strength", (12)P4, and Kussami's rude eating of the fish cake given to the cat by the guests is evidence. In the novel, people who represent the strong and cats who represent the weak often "talk", which clears up the gap between people and cats. The activities of Kumisha and others often revolve around cats, forming a carnival world where people and cats have fun together. This paper mainly discusses two aesthetic characteristics of carnival: exaggeration and depravity. 1, exaggerated. In the cat's description of Mrs. Jintian, she wrote: "The hair combed at the root of her bare forehead rises like a dam, at least half the length of her face ... but her nose is surprisingly large, as if someone else's nose had been stolen and pressed on her face. Her nose is like a stone lantern that an evocation agency moved to a small yard of more than ten square meters. It is huge and always makes people feel uncoordinated. " (13)P7 1 For another example, Misha in bad karma asked his wife to hit the cat on the head. When the cat purred, he asked his wife whether meowing was an exclamation or an adverb. Kumisha didn't care about his boring behavior, but solemnly said to his wife, "This is a big problem that China scholars are racking their brains at present." "This is an important problem. This is called ". (14)P20 1 The boring problem is exaggerated by Misha as a crucial problem, which is very comic. 2. downgrade. Degeneration is secularization or debasement, that is, all advanced, spiritual, ideal and abstract things are transferred to the material and physical level. It should be noted that depravity is not against spirit, ideal and abstract things, let alone denying them, but shifting, that is, reducing or transforming these orthodox cultural factors into material and physical levels to express and ridicule. Please look at the daily words and deeds of intellectuals in the novel. Kusami, a middle school English teacher, will play dirty with his nose hair; What the aesthete Mi Ting did was basically boring, vulgar or arty. His unique skill is to make fun of people for a while, make up strange dishes for a while, and talk about the fourteen uses of scissors for a while. John, who is about to become a doctor of science, is also studying strange and boring things, such as the mechanics of suspension, his paper on the firmness of acorns and the movement of celestial bodies, and the influence of ultraviolet rays on the electrodynamics of frog eyes. What is even more puzzling is that whether he can get a doctorate depends on whether he can successfully grind a glass ball. There are often jokes about elegant things in novels, such as Kumisha's jokes about "Yamato Soul" and the cat's jokes about "Murasaki Four Parts". "Probably in the future, these three daughters, even if they become brown or gray, will find lovers to elope together. As a father, he will still be indifferent, so let's eat his rice and drink his soup as usual. "(15)P279 is correspondingly degraded, that is, the status of vulgar things is improved. As can be seen from the Japanese title of "I am a cat", cats began to talk in an arrogant tone of "our generation". Interestingly, cats use honorifics to animals and add "Jun" to animal names, such as "Mantis Jun". Fourth, puns and satire 1 with Japanese characteristics, puns. In a certain language environment, using the conditions of polysemy and homophony of words, deliberately making sentences have double meanings, which is called pun. According to the relevant theories of structuralist literary critics (citing Saussure and Lacan), puns are similar to the rupture of the corresponding relationship between signifier and signified. The signifier mainly refers to sound and image, and the signified mainly refers to concept. Saussure regards signifier and signified as two opposite linguistic levels. " Language symbol is like a blank sheet of paper, with concept as its front and sound as its reverse. (See Saussure's A Course in General Linguistics) Lacan believes that the one-to-one correspondence between the signifier and the signified in Saussure's eyes is only a utopian illusion, and the signifier is in a sliding state. In his famous paper "On Stolen Letters", Saussure finally deconstructed the Logos system of binary opposition between the signifier and the signified. The author quotes the paper The Scarlet Letter under Lacan's Examination: From to by He Chang and Chen Jiao 'e to explain Lacan's so-called signifier sliding point of view more clearly. In this paper, when analyzing Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Lacan's point of view is used to question the A word on the heroine Hester's chest. The heroine wears the scarlet letter as a symbol of shame because of adultery (A is its initials). With the passage of time, the concept expressed as signifier A has changed in a series of special occasions, for example, because of her exquisite embroidery skills. One "drifted from adultery" to "art" signifier chain, (16) because of her ability, one drifted to competence, while her kindness and purity drifted to angels, and so on. In I am a cat, the author uses pun rhetoric to break the one-to-one correspondence between the signifier and the signified. For example, when describing the conversation between the coachman's cat Lao Hei and Kusami's cat, Lao Hei said, "What! Congratulations? If the first month is worth congratulating, isn't this thing of yours congratulating you all the year round? (17)P28 According to the translator's annotation, the word "congratulations" has double meanings in Japanese, one is "congratulations", and the other is "simpleton" and "stupidity". (See note (1) on page 28 of "I am a cat") Another example is Mi Ting, who said that it is "boneless" for snakes to eat snake rice. The "backbone" here also refers to people who have no integrity in Japanese. (See note 1 on page 16 1 in "I am a cat") Another example is to portray Mrs. Jintian as a "nose". In Japanese, "high nose" also means "arrogance". Due to language differences, translating I am a cat into other languages will certainly cause difficulties such as pun and irony, but it will also make the original work more famous and difficult to imitate. 2. Irony. The extensive use of irony is another feature of this work. In the preface to I am a cat, the translator wrote, "The author uses two forms of irony. One is the irony that is often seen in other literary works, that is, what should be praised is deliberately expressed in derogatory terms, or on the contrary, what should be praised is expressed in commendatory terms, forming a strong effect of false praise and true praise. The other is the unique skills used by the author in this book. He uses the complex features of "therapeutic expression" in Japanese to achieve funny and ironic effects. " The so-called "dealing with expression" means that the speaker or narrator should consider the relationship with the listener, and consider whether to use honorific words or part-time words in the choice of appellation, verbs and modal particles to suit his own identity. It is not surprising that this kind of' treatment performance' constitutes a common communication language if used properly. If the' treatment performance' is deliberately reversed, it will form ridicule or irony. "(18) p112 There are many places where irony is used in the whole book. The above-mentioned "mantis king" and "chilling king" are ironic, that is, the honorific words are used to the wrong object. When a thief enters Misha's bitter house, the author also uses honorific words to the thief in a cat's tone. "If (19)P 123 As another irony, when Kumisha was teased by the students of Luo Yun Pavilion, the cat commented:" But the conversation of these gentlemen is different, full of words like' you boy' and' fuck you' ... Today in the 20th century, it is said that it has become an educated gentleman. V. Conclusion Natsume's early experience of studying abroad has a great influence on the author's creation. When studying in the UK, "Soseki felt the great differences between eastern and western cultures and experienced the contempt of westerners for orientals. This led to the sudden emergence of Su Shi's ideas of "oriental consciousness" and "self-orientation". (2 1)P264 Therefore, in I am a cat, the author profoundly reveals the decadent phenomenon of the society at that time, and tries to shape the language and culture with Japanese characteristics and seek "self-orientation". Sosuke Natsume is proficient in western learning and sinology, and he is well integrated into novel creation. The author thinks that I am a cat is also influenced by Hoffman's The Outlook on Life of Male Cat Moore, and writes at the end of the novel: "I was born a cat and lived in this world for two years. I often think,' I'm afraid it's rare to see someone as outstanding and knowledgeable as me'. Unexpectedly, not long ago, there appeared a relative named "Moore" whom I had never seen before. He caused a sensation there, which really surprised me. I inquired carefully, and it turned out that it died a hundred years ago. " (22)P364 From the perspective of satirical art, Natsume Soseki was influenced by the satirical art of European travel novels, especially by British Swift. The satirical techniques such as comic exaggeration and pretentious narration of boring trivial things in I am a cat are similar to those in Swift's Gulliver's Travels. In addition, Sasaki inherited the Japanese game-like satirical style well, and tore open the "civilization coat" in the Meiji 1930s with a funny and teasing gesture, finally exposing the ugly side of society. I am a cat is a rare satirical masterpiece in the history of modern Japanese literature.

Reference (1) is quoted from Baidu Encyclopedia /view/25605.htm(2) Zhu Liyuan. Contemporary western literary theory. Shanghai: East China Normal University Press, 2005. (3) Zhu Liyuan. Contemporary western literary theory. Shanghai: East China Normal University Press, 2005. (4) 2003.(5) Liu Guangzhen. A study of Natsume Soseki's novels. Doctoral thesis of Shandong University, 2006. (6) Natsume Soseki. I am a cat. Liu Zhenying, translated. Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2003. (7) Natsume Soseki. I am a cat. Liu Zhenying, translated. 2005.(9) Tilly. History of western philosophy. Ge Li, translated. Beijing: Commercial Press, 2006. (10) Tilly. History of western philosophy. Ge Li, translated. Beijing: Commercial Press, 2006. (16544) 2003.( 12) Natsume Sosek. I am a cat. Translated by Liu Zhenying. Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2003. (13) Natsume Sosek. I am a cat. Translated by Liu Zhenying. Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2003. (.2003. (15) Natsume Sosek. I am a cat. Translated by Liu Zhenying. Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2003. (16) He Jiaoe. The Scarlet Letter under Lacan's Examination: From Stolen Letters to Journal of Zhejiang University of Technology (Social Science Edition), September 2007. (17) Natsume Sosek. I am a cat. Liu Zhenying, translated. Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2003. (18) Natsume Sosek. I am a cat (preface). Translated. Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2003. (20) Natsume Soseki. I am a cat. Translated by Liu Zhenying. Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2003. (2 1) Zheng Kelu. History of foreign literature (Ⅱ). Beijing: Higher Education Press, 199.

2003. On the Narrative Features of I am a Cat

Natsume Soseki established his leading position in modern Japanese literature with his masterpiece I am a cat, which showed the faces of some bourgeoisie and intellectuals in Japanese society in the 1930s from the perspective of cats. This paper aims to explore the narrative features of irony in I am a cat, such as defamiliarization, ambiguity and irony. Keywords: Natsume Soseki: I am a cat narrative feature

(PS: This paper was written when I was in graduate school. This is absolutely original and unpublished. It should be no problem to mix a final assignment. I don't need it at work. I am lucky to be able to help you. )