Associate prof. Gabriela Iuliana Colipc-Ciobanu, PhD

I. Early models for the analysis of narrative discourseII. Grard Genettes theory of narrative discourseIII. Structuralist narratology at the turn of the millennium : Mieke Bal

From the Aristotelian mimesis to early twentieth-century typologies of point of view. Story and Plot. Wayne Booths Neo-Aristotelian approach to narrative discourse. The Formalist fabula/sjuzet distinction. The Structuralist histoire/rcit or story/discourse distinction.

Plato (The Republic)Mimesis/Diegesis = imitation/copy of realitydirect imitation of speech (dialogue)/ vs./ indirect imitation of reality (summarising narration)Artistic representations of material objects are too far from reality, being imitations of imitations. (Kenny, 2013: xii)Copies of reality, mere substitutes for the things themselves may, unfortunately, be false or illusory substitutes that stir up antisocial emotions (violence or weakness) and they may represent bad persons and actions, encouraging imitation of evil. (Mitchell, 1995: 14-15)

Aristotle (Poetics)Mimesis related to truth and likelihood (not to truth/ falsehood) Mimesis = a representational model of reality (not a mere, perfect imitation/copy of reality). The writers job is not to relate what actually happened, but rather the kind of thing that would happen, either necessarily or probably. In addition, (s)he tells about truths that, even if not necessarily in the philosophical sense, are universal in their application to human nature. Literature is supposed to teach lessons based on necessity or probability. (Kenny, 2013: xxvii, xxviii) Both indirect narrative and direct representation become varieties of mimesis. Forms of mimesis distinctions in terms of their medium (epic, drama, painting, sculpture, dancing and music), their object (people in action), and their mode of representation (the narrative/epic and the dramatic) (Poetics. I. Various Kinds of Poetry) the first plot and character typologies.

The understanding of a piece of writing fictional or non-fictional can only be explained in terms of our existing model(s) of reality that are influenced by:the structure of fact, explanation, supposition, which draws on our already existing knowledge ;the plausibility of the report, i.e. the possibility of making plausible connections between one act and another. (Leech, 1992: 154) the written text = a representational model which may turn out to be more or less faithful to the represented reality

Until the end of the nineteenth century, writers and critics have drawn upon the Aristotelian theory of mimesis, showing more concern with the extent to which literary works managed to comply with the constantly debated upon and redefined principle of verisimilitude. There have been, of course, some who, more or less explicitly, have investigated different aspects of narrative structure, calling into question the pre-established conventions of novel writing and challenging the readers expectations. (e.g. Cervantes, Diderot, Sterne, etc.). Nevertheless, it is only from the nineteenth century on that narrative techniques become the subject of more systematic analysis and Flaubert or Henry James are among the first to pave the way for the development of narratology as a well-defined approach to narratives.

Percy Lubbock (The Craft of Fiction, 1921)a typology of narrative situations in which two sets of criteria are combined: on the one hand, the opposition between showing/telling (as a result of Lubbocks enlarging on mimesis/diegesis), on the other hand, the distinction between different modes of representation or points of view (i.e. the panoramic survey, the dramatized narrator, the dramatized mind and pure drama). Norman Friedman (1955)eight narrative situations, the distinctions being given by the same criterion of the point of view (i.e. editorial omniscience, neutral omniscience, I as a witness, I as protagonist, multiple selective omniscience, selective omniscience, dramatic mode and camera).

E. M. Forster (1927) the distinction between the what and the how = story and plot (1) The king died and then the queen died.(2) The king died, and then the queen died of grief.(3) The queen died, no one knew why, until it was discovered that it was through grief at the death of the king.Story: a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence (1). Plot: a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality (2); a narrative of events with more mystery in it, with the time-sequence suspended and capable of further high development (3). (Forster in Scholes 1966: 221)

The Chicago School/ Neo-Aristotelianism: Its theoretical basis is principally derived from Aristotles concepts of plot, character and genre, as presented in his Rhetoric and Poetics. Wayne Booth (The Rhetoric of Fiction, 1961)basic premises: All narrative is a form of rhetoric.The distinction between showing and telling in fiction too simplistic.distinctions between different instances involved in the communication process in literature.

Booth does not see the author as the only person involved in creating a work of fiction. Instead, he sees this creation as comprised of both author and reader with a narrator to guide the reader through the maze of the text. For Booth, the reader and the author cannot be separated because of the power both author and reader exert on the text and the power the text exerts on the author and reader. Booth argues that the author constructs an implied author and a narrator, both of whom connect to a specific reading community. implied author (the authors official scribe or second self) whom the reader invents by deduction from the attitudes articulated in the fiction.The implied author chooses, consciously or unconsciously, what we read; we infer him as an ideal, literary, created version of the real man; he is the sum of his own choices in:style (providing insight into the authors norms); tone (through which the author implies his judgment of the material presented); technique (the artistry of the author). It is only by distinguishing between the author and his implied image that we can avoid pointless and unverifiable talk about such qualities as sincerity or seriousness in the author. (Booth, 1983: 74-5)

Narrator typologies (1):Undramatized narrators (that are not given personal characteristics): In so far as a novel does not refer directly to this [implied] author, there will be no distinction between him and the implied, undramatized narrator. (151)Dramatized narrators: () even the most reticent narrator has been dramatized as soon as he refers to himself as I. The range of dramatized narrators is usually wide, from vivid narrator-characters, disguised narrator-characters telling the audience what it needs to know or seemingly acting out their roles to third-person centers of consciousness through whom authors have filtered their narratives. Hence the further distinction between mere observers and narrator-agents (who produce measurable effect on the course of events). (152-3)

Modes of representation and narrator type (2):All narrators and observers, whether first or third person, can relay their tales to us primarily as scene (), primarily as summary () or, most commonly, as a combination of the two. [] the contrast between scene and summary, between showing and telling, is likely to be of little use until we specify the kind of narrator who is providing the scene or the summary. (154-5)Commentary: (1) merely ornamental, serving a rhetorical purpose, without being part of the dramatic structure; (2) integral to the dramatic structure. self-conscious narrators, aware of themselves as writers (Such fiction shatters any illusion that the narrator is telling something that has actually happened by revealing to the reader that the narration is a work of fictional art, or by flaunting the discrepancies between its patent fictionality and the reality it seems to represent.) /versus/ narrators who rarely, if ever, discuss their writing chores or who seem unaware that they are writing/thinking/speaking/reflecting a literary work.

Narrator typologies (3):reliable narrator: usually in the third person, coming close to the values of the implied author (he speaks for or acts in accordance with the norms of the work, which is to say, the implied author's norms);unreliable narrator: often a character within the story, deviating from the values of the implied author. It is true that most of the great reliable narrators indulge in large amounts of incidental irony, and they are thus unreliable in the sense of being potentially deceptive. But difficult irony is not sufficient to make a narrator unreliable. Nor is unreliability ordinarily a matter of lying (). It is most often a matter of what [Henry] James calls inconscience; the narrator is mistaken, or he believes himself to have qualities which the author denies him.Unreliable narrators thus differ markedly depending on how far and in what direction they depart from their authors norms; the older term tone, like the currently fashionable terms irony and distance, covers many effects that we should distinguish. (158-9)The author also creates an implied/postulated reader whose values and background represent the ideal reader: The author creates, in short, an image of himself and another image of his reader; he makes his reader, as he makes his second self, and the most successful reading is one in which the created selves, author and reader, can find complete agreement. (138)Real author implied author narrator ----- narratee implied reader real reader

Russian Formalism: Refuting the earlier perspectives which regarded literature as a mere reflection of biographical, historical or social reality, it insisted on its specificity so it aimed at finding a "scientific", objective method for defining the specific features of literature, its methods and devices.What constitutes literature is its difference from other orders of fact; literature is defined by its special use of language deviating from and distorting practical language. The object of literary studies = LITERARINESS of the poetic and fictional works, their specific organization and the structural devices that differentiate them from other types of discourses. DEFAMILIARIZATION: Art defamiliarizes things that have become habitual or automatic. It makes objects unfamiliar, in order to help us experience the artfulness of objects, in other words to ensure our fresh, non-habitual, non-automatic perception of words and ideas. The purpose of a work of art is to change our mode of perception from the automatic and practical to the artistic. (Viktor Shklovsky, 1917)

Fabula/Sjuzet:Fabula (story) = the raw material, the chronological sequence of events.Sjuzet (plot) = the order and manner in which they are actually presented in the narrative. It prevents us from regarding the incidents as typical and familiar.The relation between fabula and sjuzhet is roughly analogous to the one between practical and poetic language. The sjuzhet creates a defamiliarizing effect on the fabula; the devices of the sjuzhet are not designed as instruments for conveying the fabula, but are foregrounded at the expense of the fabula. E.g. Laurence Sternes Tristram Shandy (Skhlovsky) The constructional devices (chaotic narrative order, prominent self-conscious authorial commentary, transposition of material, temporal displacements, the inclusion of secondary anecdotes, digressions of all kinds) are laid bare and not motivated by the events or situations in the story.

Vladimir Propp (Morphology of the Folktale) establishes the important principle according to which personages are variable, but their functions are constant and limited. The functions of characters serve as stable, constant elements in a tale, independent of how and by whom they are fulfilled and they constitute the fundamental components of a tale.The number of functions known to the fairy tale is limited.The sequence of functions is always identical.All fairy tales are of one type in regard to their structure.Propp organizes the quest of his heroes into six main stages (preparation; complication; transference; struggle; return; recognition) and thirty one different functions. Propp also identifies several spheres of action (the evil doer/the villain; the giver donor, provider; helper/assistant; the emperor and his daughter; the sender/dispatcher; the hero seeker or victim; the false hero) with three possible situations: The sphere of action corresponds exactly to one character.One character functions in several spheres of action.One sphere of action includes several characters (one role may employ more than one hero).

Structuralism: The essence of structuralist theories is the belief that things cannot be understood in isolation, they have to be seen in the context of the larger structures (hence, the term structuralism). Its most revolutionary feature: the importance that it attributes to language used as a model for all sorts of non-linguistic institutions.Literature is not only organised like language, but it is actually made of language (Todorov literature is always about language) and thus it makes us aware of the nature of language itself. Language is not just the means of communication in literature, but it is also the content of literature. Therefore, the relationship between literature and language is one of parallelism/homology: literature is organised at every level like language the task of creating a universal grammar of narratives.

Structuralist narratology (Roland Barthes, Tzvetan Todorov, etc.) the two-fold distinction of fabula/ sjuzet translated it into French terms as histoire/rcit. (On English grounds, the French terms will be transposed by Seymour Chatman, for instance, into story/discourse.)

Structuralist Narratology: Andr J. GreimasAccording to Greimas, human beings make meaning by structuring the world in terms of two kinds of opposed pairs: A is the opposite of B and -A is the opposite of B. It is this fundamental structure of binary oppositions that shapes all human languages, human experience, and consequently, the narratives through which that experience is articulated. plot formulas (conflict and resolution, struggle and reconciliation, separation and union) are carried out by actants (character functions).six character functions: subject/object; sender/receiver; helper/opponent.three main patterns of plot: Stories of Quest/Desire: a Subject (hero) searches for an Object (person/state/thing).Stories of Communication: a Sender (person/god/institution, etc.) sends the Subject in search of the Object which the Receiver ultimately receives.Stories of Auxiliary Support or Hindrance (sub-plots): A Helper supports the Subject in the Quest; an Opponent hinders the Subject from carrying on his Quest. 20 functions grouped into three main types of structures (syntagms):Contractual structures (making/breaking agreements; establishment/violation of prohibitions; alienation/reconciliation);Performative structures (performance of tasks, trials, struggles);Disjunctive structures (travel, movement, arrivals, departures).