theory of narative

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WS 2011/12

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narrative

[na-ra-tiv] telling of some true or fictitious event or connected se-quence of events, recounted by a narrator to a narratee (although the-re may be more than one of each). Narratives are to be distinguishedfrom descriptions (of qualities, states, or situations), and also fromdramatic enactments of events (although a dramatic work may alsoinclude narrative speeches as well as descriptions).

A narrative consists of a set of events (the story) recounted in aprocess of narration (or discourse), in which the events are selectedand arranged in a particular order (the plot).

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Narratology (lat. narrare = erzählen)

Narratology: Term applied to the formal analysis of narratives. Nar-ratology rests upon certain basic distinctions between what is nar-rated (e.g. events, characters, and settings of a story) and how it isnarrated (e.g. by what kind of narrator, in what order, at what time).Investigations into the narrated materials commonly seek the ele-mentary units that are common to all narratives.

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Story (What) vs. Discourse (How)

What How

RussianFormalists fabula

sujet /sjuzhet

Chatman story discourse

E. M. Forster story plot discourse

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E.M. ForsterPlot / Story

“The king died and then the queen died, that is a story.The king died and then the queen died of grief, that is aplot” (E.M. Forster)

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Narrative LevelEvents

Events are the smallest units of plot, "which cannot be divided anyfurther"(Lotman 1927: 330).

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Mimesis

Showing (mimesis):

Mimesis [my-mees-is] is the opposite of diegesis. It refers to theattempt by an author to speak in a voice other than his / her own,specifically a character’s voice. In more recent critical discourse mi-mesis has become a code phrase for realism, or more precisely worksof art that attempt to present reality in its most everyday sense. Aliterary work that is understood to be reproducing an external realityor any aspect of it is described as mimetic.

”The student looked intently on his examination sheet. Hislips were pressed together and the palms of his hands leftsweaty spots on his desk.“

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Diegesis

Telling (diegesis)

[dy-e-jee-sis] The opposite of mimesis, according to Plato. In diege-sis the narrator speaks in his / her own voice, whereas in mimesishe / she does not (instead she / he trys to create the illusion that itis someone else who speaks). The Narrator is in overt control of theaction presentation, characterization and point-of-view arrangement.

”I gaze down to get a first look on the final examination, thesmall, black print looks like a threat too me, written in alanguage I couldn’t understand, it might have been writtenin hieroglyphs or Celtic runes as far as I am concerned. Itcertainly didn’t help that my right eye started twitchingrepeatedly and the pen felt like a stone in my wet hands.Oh the heartbeat beats like a hammer on an anvil I feellike I am passing....“

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Analysis of TimeUnity of Time/Place/Plot

Three aspects of time are used for the analysis of the story: duration,order, and frequency.These aspects are used to analyse the relation between story-timeand discourse-time.

Story-time is the length of time that passes in the story.Discourse-time covers the length of time that is taken up by the

telling of the story.

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Duration

There are five possible relations between story-time and discourse-time concerning the duration of a story:

1. Scene (real-time): story-time = discourse-time (as in adialogue)

2. Summary: story-time > discourse-time ("He was born, lived for99 years and died.")

3. Stretch: story-time < discourse-time ("While he jumped downthe cliff everything seemed so vivid: the dark blue ofthe sea, the white clouds. Suddenly memories of hischildhood flashed through his mind...")

4. Elipsis: discourse-time skips part of the story time ("Hereturned ten years after joining the army as a bitterman.")

5. Pause: story-time pauses while discourse-time continues(usually in descriptions)

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Discourse Time Story Timesummary <scene =ellipsis 0 1pause 1 0

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Frequency

1. Singulative: An event takes place one single time and is referredto one single time.

2. Repetetive: An event takes place one single time but is referredto various times (e.g. from different perspectives)

3. Iterative: An event takes place various times but is referred toonly once ("Day after day he looked at her, but shenever ever noticed him.")

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Order of Events

1. Chronological Order:Assume A = He was born, B = He lived, C = Hedied.

ABC = Chronological StructureCBA = Anachronological structure

3. Prolepsis Flash-forward4. Analepsis Flash-back

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Characterization

"What is character but the determination of incident. Whatis incident but the determination of character."(Henry Ja-mes)

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Focalization (Voice: Who sees?)

Zero-Focalisation No focalization, i.e. the other does not restricthimself to what one character knows (→ narratorknows more than the character)

External Focalization (– narrator-focalizer) narrative eventspresented from narrator’s perspective, ideal realisationwould be total neutrality.

Internal Focalization (– character focalizer) narrative eventspresented from a character’s perspective.

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Focalizer = subject of the verbs of perception, thinking,feeling, rememberingExternal focalization (– narrator-focalizer)

narrative events presented from narrator’s perspectiveInternal focalization (– character focalizer, focal character,reflector)

narrative events presented from a character’s perspective

Fixed focalizationVariable focalizationMultiple focalization

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”Implied Author“

Wayne C. Booth prefers the term implied author over ‘voice’, inorder better to indicate that the reader of a work of fiction has thesense not only of the timbre and tone of a speaking voice, but of atotal human presence.Booth’s view is that this implied author is ’an ideal’, literary, createdversion of the real mean’ – that is, the implied author, althoughrelated to the actual author, is nonetheless part of the total fiction,whom the author gradually brings into being in the course of hiscomposition, and who plays an important role in the overall effect ofa work on a reader.

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Narrative Communication Situation (Chatman)

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Analytical categories applied to narrators (Nünning)

Categories for classificationof narrator

Opposite ends of thespectrum

Communication level ofspeaker extradiegetic intradiegetic

Presence on the level ofthe characters heterodiegetic homodiegetic

Degree of involvement inthe narrated events not involved autodiegetic

Degree of explicitness covert (neutral) overt (explicit)Degree of (un)reliability reliable unreliableGender female male

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Franz Karl Stanzel: Typical Narrative Situations

First-person narra-tive situation

Authorial narrati-ve situation

Figural narrativesituation

Narrator referring tohimself as ”I“

Narrator referring tohimself as ”I“

Narrative in 3rd Per-son.

Narrator part of nar-rated action – eitheras protagonist (I-as-protagonist) or wit-ness (I-as-witness)

Narrator outside ofnarrated action

Narrator outside ofnarrated action –perspective of oneor several characters(reflectors)

First-Person narra-tor (narrating I orexperiencing I narra-tive distance)

Overt authorial nar-rator

Covert authorial nar-rator

Limited viewpoint Usually omniscience Limited view-point(s)

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Narrators and Narration

The Narrative Situation consists of two aspects:

1. Narrative Voice: Who speaks? Relation to the story: Is thenarrator personally involved? Gérard Genette’sStructuralist Taxonomy (1980)

2. Focalization: Who sees?

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Homodiegetic narrator: Takes part in the events he narrates (= 1st

person narrator (Stanzel))Autodiegetic narrator: protagonist of his own narrative. fictional

autobiography is an I-as-protagonist (Stanzel).Heterodiegetic narrator: Does not take part in the events he

narrates. May have limited or unlimited insight intocharacters and events.

Extradiegetic narrator: superior to the first narrative and concernedwith its narration → level of narrative transmission.

Intradiegetic narrator: level of the story (character who is part ofthe narrated story)

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"Jedes Ereignis, von dem in einer Erzählung erzählt wird,liegt auf der nächst höheren diegetischen Ebene zu der,auf der der hervorbringende narrative Akt dieser Erzählungangesiedelt ist."

Genette, Die Erzählung, 148

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Four Basic Types of Narrators:

extradiegetic – heterodiegetic : 1st-Level-Narrator, who tells astory she/he is not part of. (Homer)

extradiegetic – homodiegetic : 1st-Level-Narrator, who tells astory she/he is part of. (Robinson Crusoe)

intradiegetic – heterodiegetic : 2nd-Level-Narrator, who tells a storyshe/he is not part of. (Sheherazade in ”1000 and oneNights”)

intradiegetic – homodiegetic : 2nd-Level-Narrator, who tells a storyshe/he is part of (Marlow in Heart of Darkness)

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Unreliable Narration

Limited knowledge of the narratorNarrator is emotional involved in the eventsNarrator has questionable norms or valuesSignals for unreliable narration: e.g.

Explicit contradictionsContrasting versions of the same eventDiscrepancies between narrator’s statements and actionsFrequent subjective commentsNarrator’s insistence on his/her credibility

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Pfister: Figure Conceptions

STATIC DYNAMICMonidimensional Multidimensional

Personification Type IndividualClosed Open

(Transpsychological) (Psychological)

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Representations of Speech, Thought and Consciousness

Degrees Typesof mimetic of speechillusion representation Examples‘purely’ When Charley got a little gindiegetic diegetic inside him he started telling war

summary, yarns for the first time in his life.psychonarration (The Big Money)

The waiter told him thatCarranza’s troops had lost Torreónand that Villa and Zapata were

indirect closing in on the Federal District.discourse (The 42nd Parallel)free indirect What was he to do? Ridiculous todiscourse try driving it away.(FID) (Hughes, “The Rain Horse”)

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Mary said/thought: “What onearth shall I do now?”

direct But what, he thinks, next?discourse (Bradbury, “Composition”)free direct Fainy’s head suddenly got verydiscourse, light. Bright boy, that’s me,

‘purely’ interior ambition and literary taste. ...mimetic monologue (The 42nd Parallel)

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Free Indirect Discourse (FID)

Linguistic combination of two voicesCharacter’s, not narrator’s, mind style / idiolect

Pronouns for the third person: “I love her” → He loved her.Retains the ’back-shir’ of tenses characteristic of IndirectDiscourse (ID):He said: “I love her” (DD).He said that he loved her (ID).He loved her (FID).Less formal syntax

Frequent use of exclamation marks and other markers ofsubjectivityFrequent use of ellipses1

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Interior Monologue / Quoted Monologue

Highly mimetic way of representing consciousnessNo discernible mediationReference to character in first personTense: narrative presentSyntactical conventions and punctuationCan represent the character’s stream of consciousness

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Stream of Consciousness

Term originally coined by Henry James’ brother William(psychologist)

Disjointed character of mental processesAdapted for literary criticism by May Sinlair (1918)

Textual depiction of mental processesAttempt to capture the randomness, irregularity, incoherenceof these processesMimetic way of representing characters’ minds

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Temporal relations between narration and story:

Ulterior narration after the events, Conrad, Heart of DarknessAnterior narration before the events, Shakespeare, Romeo & JuliaSimultaneous narration during the events, Kelman How late it isIntercalated narration alternation of events and narration as seen in

epistolary novels, Stoker Dracula

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Further Reading

A Guide to the Theory of Poetry

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