在文學敘事中，敘事方法所影響的內容與形式、不同敘事層級間的權力架構一直文本探討的核心問題。在後現代文學論述中，作者反對單一敘事所帶來的敘事權威，以多重視角的故事敘事取代傳統全知敘事視角，減少單一敘事背後所產生的意識形態，以及其所衍伸的權力架構。透過「說故事者」的敘事結構與框架故事的敘事模式，後現代小說以不同的敘事架構進行敘事的變革，接露敘事背後所隱藏的敘事霸權。在後現代主義的論述中，敘事所產生的框架是人為且可塑的，當大敘事的框架被打破，敘事的背景融合了不同時間及地點，提供被隱藏和弱化的聲音重新表達的機會。本文以《一千零一夜》（又名《天方夜譚》）探討說故事者的敘事結構如何幫助後現代小說打破大敘事的故事框架，透過跨時空的敘事線重新改變語言中的權力結構。
《一千零一夜》以說故事者沙赫拉扎德（Shahrazad）一角在其故事背景的框架下講述不同的故事。作為文學史中最具影響力的文學作品之一，《一千零一夜》以序言作為框架故事，向讀者展示《漁夫與精靈》、《沙赫里曼國王和他的兒子卡馬爾·扎曼的故事》等著名故事。框架故事的敘事營造出一個複雜的敘事迷宮，將讀者引入不同文化與時空的想像世界，挑戰傳統線性敘事的時空限制。
本文以伯頓譯本的《一千零一夜》（1885-1888）作為主要分析文本，分析其故事中說故事者如何透過重複性的說故事架構打破權威並改變自己的命運。在《一千零一夜》的敘事架構中，故事角色以「說故事」作為生命的交換，在面對生命威脅時透過永無止境的故事線取代有限的生命、透過故事改變權威的想法進而逃離生命的威脅。在不同說故事者的敘事架構下，不同的平行敘事等級打破傳統的線性敘事，進而成為許多後現代文學作家探討敘事架構的參考。

The effect of narrative styles upon the content, the correlation between form and content, has long been a core issue throughout literary history. Postmodernism, in the spirit of opposing the indisputable authority brought by a single narrative voice, dismisses the traditional omniscient narrator controlling the overall content and favoring stories that are presented through multiple subjective points of view and therefore heralds the return of storytellers. The various storytellers create layers of meanings, while the postmodern experiments with frameworks, revealing how those frames constrain one’s life in multiple ways. As they event these frames as artificial and malleable, they not only allow different voices from various places and times to merge but also those that were previously suppressed to be expressed.
The Arabian Nights (Nights), also known as A Thousand and One Nights, introduces readers from all over the world to its beloved storyteller, Shahrazad, who later also inspires postmodern literature authors to follow her storytelling style. As one of the most influential literary works, Nights brings readers a great prologue as its frame story, along with famous tales such as “The Fisherman and the Jinni” and “The Story of King Shahriman and his son, Qamar al-Zaman,” whose ways of storytelling and content replicate Shahrazad and King Shahryar’s personal experience. This Russian-doll-like narrative style creates a complicated labyrinth to lure readers into the imaginative world that challenges the limit of time and space usually brought by traditional narration.
This thesis aims to select some of the tales in Burton’s translation edition of The Arabian Nights (1885-1888) in which the characters change their fate by repeating the same or similar stories over and over again. Those characters in the stories usually face an almighty figure that threatens their lives, but some of them are able to extend their life expense with the length of their tales and break the unshakable authority with the act of storytelling; while others bridge faraway places with storytelling that create parallel layers of narrative levels and break the conventional linear storytelling timeline. Through those features brought by storytelling and stories-with-stories framework, this thesis hopes to find out how Nights becomes one of the greatest inspirations for postmodern literature authors to experience their narrative style.

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