Narrative Aesthetics and Ethics in On Beauty by Zadie Smith

The present study is based on the interaction between aesthetics and ethics and by focusing on the rhetorical narrative theory and the ethical philosophy it aims to investigate the aesthetic representation of ethics in On Beauty by Zadie Smith. On this account, this study relies primarily on James Phelan's rhetorical approach to narratology and Charles Taylor's philosophy of ethics. According to Phelan, the study of narrative aesthetics deals with the analysis of the narrative techniques, employed by the author and the narrator. Free indirect discourse and narrative voice are two techniques that contribute to the aesthetic dimension of the narrative. Through free indirect discourse, the readers are given a chance to enter inside the characters' unconscious mind which is integrated within the narrative flow, while narrative voice is defined by Phelan as the synthesis of style, tone, and ethics. Furthermore, the ethical world of the story is analyzed concerning the characters' various attitudes towards the concept of beauty, and their tendency towards human connection and altruism as ethical goods. Smith’s characters search for their authentic selfhood within the pluralistic context of the globalized world while practicing concern for others. This article aims at exploring the ethical values embedded in the choice of using certain narrative frameworks in Smith’s novel, and their relation to the contemporary tendency in literature towards rejecting postmodern fragmented narrative world.