Recently scholars involved in narrative analysis seem to have overlooked the role
of the narrator and overemphasized that of the readers. They even have different
perspectives on the identification of the readers. Whoever the reader is, they place an
omnipotent ability onto the reader as the master of interpreting the biblical narratives so
that the reader maintains an unchanged position in this field but the narrator loses his/her
effect. Such a tendency becomes more problematic in dealing with biblical
characterization. With this problem in mind, the principal objective of this dissertation is to
demonstrate the dynamic relationship between the narrative themes and characters
created by the Lukan narrator rather than the reader in the Infancy Narrative. This
study considers the narrator as the main entity who creates the narrative themes,
especially in relation to the narrative characters, and presents a model of narrative
analysis which has been formalized for the study of the Luke's thematic characterization
in the Infancy Narrative (Luke 1-2). The main question of the dissertation is two-fold: 1)
how does the narrator characterize his characters for the sake of his narrative themes?; 2)
What is the thematic function of the Infancy Narrative in the Lukan Gospel in relation to
the narrator's thematization of the characters? In order to answer this question, this study suggests three steps for analyzing the narrative. One is to define the types of characters (on-stage: front ground, foreground, and background; and off-stage: setting and potential), another is to determine narrative themes based upon three dimensions (textual, intertextual, and extratextual), and the other is to observe thematic relations between the characters in the Infancy Narrative and the following parts of the Lukan Gospel. With these steps, this study defmes all characters of the Infancy Narrative and evaluates their thematic roles, and the narrator's themes
conveyed by his characters. Lastly, after examining the thematic coherence through
narrative characters in the Gospel, this dissertation attests that the Infancy Narrative is a
well-designed thematic introduction of the Gospel which establishes the major themes of
the Gospel, conveyed by the divine characters (God, the Holy Spirit, and the angel), John,
Jesus, and others. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/23848 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Choi, Byung Pill |
| Contributors | Porter, Stanley, Christian Theology |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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