Recurring for Configuring the Passional Simulacra: A Greimasian Semiotic Perspective of the “Repetition” in Narratives

Abstract

This essay aims at investigating the various types of repetition in narratives as the recurring modalizations and interrelated modal arrangements from the Greimasian semiotic point of view. The passional competence they create can be independent of the narrative program, while regulating and evoking the performances of it. Through Greimasian analysis which can offer a creative and heuristic perspective, the writer argues that the repetition in the energetic-dynamic model of narratives can be traced by the generating process of signification itself. In both novels analyzed in this essay, the repetition is a key contrivance in the causal chain of the life story from being conflicting to being insoluble. And this contrivance bares particular significance for the transformation and development of modern Chinese literature.