Chinese Journal of Literary Criticism

No.1, 2024

A Comparison of the Ethics of Narrator’s Intention in Chinese and Western Novels

(Abstract)

Jiang Shouyi

The difference between the ethics of narrator’s intention in Chinese classical novels and Western novels can be carried out in terms of the novel’s external appearance and the narrator’s choice of perspective. The novel’s external appearance includes the naming of the novel and chapter layout, and the perspectives chosen by narrators are mainly omniscient perspective and character perspective. From the perspective of the characters, what is closely related to them is their ethical personalities, the former of which ultimately reflects the ethical norms of the society, and the latter of which presents different faces of ethical personalities.