NARRATIVE ANALYSIS OF GASTON LEROUX’S THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA

Abstract

Literary narratives have a proper arrangement of events and characters in an order of time and space to produce meaning and other discursive functions. The basic idea of analyzing a narrative is to examine the skillful act of storytelling. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux is considered as the precursor of the twentieth-century detective and mystery fiction that flourished both in France as well as abroad through its unique narrative style even though it follows the aspects of the Gothic and the fantastic. The paper analyses the novel in the light of narrative theory. Treating the text as narrative, it focuses on the structural aspects of the novel, concentrates on the important techniques and devices, explores the usages of the narrative levels and their functions, and analyses how they are employed by the author in certain occasions to narrate the events inside the text. It subsumes all aspects of the interactive relationship of narrative agents, including such issues as the modes of narration, focalization, and spatial and temporal relationships.