introduction to narratology

8/10/2019 Introduction to Narratology

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I. Early models for the analysis of narrative

discourse

II. Grard enettes theory of narrative

discourse

III. Structuralist narratology at the turn of the

millennium : Mieke Bal


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From the Aristotelian mimesis to early twentieth-century typologies of pointof view.

Story and Plot.

Wayne Booths Neo-Aristotelian approach to

narrative discourse. The Formalist fabula/sjuzetdistinction.

The Structuralist histoire/rcit or story/discoursedistinction.


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Plato (The Republic)

Mimesis/Diegesis = imitation copyof reality

direct imitation of speech dialogue)/ vs./ indirect

imitation of

reality

summarising narration)

Artistic representations of material objects are too far fromreality, being imitations of imitations. (Kenny, 2013: xii)

Copies of reality, mere substitutes for the things themselvesmay, unfortunately, be false or illusory substitutes that stir up

antisocial emotions (violence or weakness) and they may

represent bad persons and actions, encouraging imitation ofevil.

(Mitchell, 1995: 14-15)


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Aristotle (Poetics) Mimesis related to truth and likelihood (not to truth/

falsehood) Mimesis = a representational model of realitynot a mere, perfect imitation/copy of reality). The writersjob

is not to relate what actually happened, but rather the kind ofthing that would happen, either necessarily or probably. Inaddition, (s)he tells about truths that, even if not necessarilyin the philosophical sense, are universal in their application tohuman nature. Literature is supposed to teach lessons basedon necessity or probability. (Kenny, 2013: xxvii, xxviii)

Both indirect narrative and direct representation becomevarieties of mimesis.

Forms of mimesis distinctions in terms of their medium

(epic, drama, painting, sculpture, dancing and music), theirobject (people in action), and their mode of representation(the narrative/epic and the dramatic) (Poetics. I. Various Kindsof Poetry) the first plot and character typologies.


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The understanding of a piece of writing fictionalor non-fictional can only be explained in termsof our existing model s) of reality that areinfluenced by:

the structure of fact, explanation, supposition, whichdraws on our already existing knowledge;

the plausibility of the report, i.e. the possibility ofmaking plausible connections between one act andanother.(Leech, 1992: 154)

the written text = a representational model whichmay turn out to be more or less faithful to the

represented reality


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Model of reality

Message

Model of reality

Message

Semantic level

Syntactic level

Graphological level

Semantic level

Syntactic level

Graphological level

Writer

encodesReader

decodes

Text


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Until the end of the nineteenth century, writers andcritics have drawn upon the Aristotelian theory ofmimesis, showing more concern with the extent towhich literary works managed to comply with theconstantly debated upon and redefined principle ofverisimilitude. There have been, of course, some who,more or less explicitly, have investigated differentaspects of narrative structure, calling into questionthe pre-established conventions of novel writing andchallenging the readers expectations. (e.g.Cervantes, Diderot, Sterne, etc.). Nevertheless, it isonly from the nineteenth century on that narrativetechniques become the subject of more systematicanalysis and Flaubert or Henry James are among thefirst to pave the way for the development ofnarratology as a well-defined approach to narratives.


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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 betweenshowing/telling

(as a result of Lubbocks enlarging onmimesis/diegesis

), on the other hand, the distinction betweendifferent modes of representation or

points of view

(i.e. thepanoramic survey, the dramatized narrator, the dramatizedmind and pure drama).

Norman Friedman(1955) eight narrative situations, the distinctions being given by the

same criterion of the point of view (i.e. editorialomniscience, neutral omniscience, I as a witness, I asprotagonist, multiple selective omniscience, selectiveomniscience, dramatic mode and camera).


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E. M. Forster(1927) the distinction between thewhat 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 discoveredthat 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 thetime-sequence suspended and capable of further highdevelopment (3). (Forster in Scholes 1966: 221)


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The Chicago School Neo-Aristotelianism: Itstheoretical basis is principally derived fromAristotlesconcepts of plot, character and genre, aspresented in his Rhetoricand 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.


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Booth does not see the author as the only person involved in creating awork of fiction. Instead, he sees this creation as comprised of bothauthor and reader with a narrator to guide the reader through themaze of the text. For Booth, the reader and the author cannot beseparated because of the power both author and reader exert on thetext and the power the text exerts on the author and reader. Boothargues that the author constructs an implied author and a narrator,

both of whom connect to a specific reading community. impliedauthor(theauthorsofficialscribeor secondself)whom the readerinvents by deduction from the attitudes articulated in the fiction.

The implied author chooses, consciously or unconsciously, what weread; we infer him as an ideal, literary, created version of the real man;he is the sum of his own choicesin: style(providing insight into the authors norms);

tone (through which the author implies his judgment of the materialpresented);

technique (the artistry of the author). Itis only by distinguishing between the author and his implied image

that we can avoid pointless and unverifiable talk about such qualitiesas sincerityor seriousnessin the author.(Booth, 1983: 74-5)


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Narrator typologies 1):

Undramatized narrators (that are not given personal characteristics):Inso 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 beendramatized as soon as he refers to himself as I. The range ofdramatized narrators is usually wide, from vivid narrator-characters,disguisednarrator-characters telling the audience what it needs toknow or seemingly acting out their roles to third-person centersof

consciousnessthrough whom authors have filtered their narratives.Hence the further distinction between mere observersand narrator-agents (who produce measurable effect on the course of events).(152-3)


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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 assummary () or, most commonly, as a combination of thetwo. [] the contrast between scene and summary, betweenshowing and telling, is likely to be of little use until we specifythe kind of narrator who is providing the scene or thesummary.(154-5) Commentary: (1) merely ornamental, serving a rhetorical purpose,

without being part of the dramatic structure; (2) integral to thedramatic structure. self-conscious narrators, aware of themselves as writers (Suchfiction shatters any illusion that the narrator is telling somethingthat has actually happened by revealing to the reader that the

narration is a work of fictional art, or by flaunting thediscrepancies between its patent fictionality and the reality itseems to represent.) /versus/ narrators who rarely, if ever, discusstheir writing chores or who seem unaware that they are

writing thinking spe king reflectinga literary work.


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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 accordancewith the norms of the work, which is to say, the implied author'snorms);

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 potentiallydeceptive. But difficult irony is not sufficient to make a narrator unreliable. Nor isunreliability 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 havequalities which the author denies him.Unreliable narrators thus differ markedly depending on how far and in what directionthey depart from their authors norms; the older term tone, like the currentlyfashionable terms irony and distance, covers many effects that we shoulddistinguish.(158-9)

The author also creates an implied/postulated readerwhose values and

background represent the ideal reader: Theauthor creates, in short, animage 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 inwhich the created selves, author and reader, can find completeagreement.(138)

Real author

implied author

narrator ----- narratee

implied reader

real reader


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Russian Formalism: Refuting the earlier perspectives whichregarded literature as a mere reflection of biographical, historicalor social reality, it insisted on its specificity so it aimed at findinga "scientific", objective method for defining the specific featuresof 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 deviatingfrom and distorting practicallanguage. The object of literarystudies = LITERARINESS of the poetic and fictional works, theirspecific organization and the structural devices that differentiatethem from other types of discourses. DEFAMILIARIZATION: Artdefamiliarizes things that have become habitual or automatic. Itmakes objects unfamiliar, in order to help us experience theartfulness of objects, in other words to ensure our fresh, non-

habitual, non-automatic perception of words and ideas. Thepurpose of a work of art is to change our mode of perceptionfrom the automatic and practical to the artistic. (Viktor Shklovsky,1917)


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Fabula/Sjuzet:

Fabula (story)= the raw material, the chronological sequence ofevents.

Sjuzet (plot)= the order and manner in which they are actuallypresented in the narrative. It prevents us from regarding theincidents as typical and familiar.

The relation between fabulaand sjuzhetis roughly analogousto the one between practical and poetic language. The sjuzhetcreates a defamiliarizing effect on the fabula; the devices ofthe sjuzhet are not designed as instruments for conveying thefabula, but are foregrounded at the expense of the fabula.

E.g. Laurence Sternes Tristram Shandy (Skhlovsky) The

constructional devices (chaotic narrative order, prominentself-conscious authorial commentary, transposition ofmaterial, temporal displacements, the inclusion of secondaryanecdotes, digressions of all kinds) are laid bare and notmotivated by the events or situations in the story.


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Vladimir Propp (Morphology of the Folktale) establishes the importantprinciple according to which personages are variable, but their functionsare 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 thefundamental 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:1. The sphere of action corresponds exactly to one character.

2. One character functions in several spheres of action.

3. One sphere of action includes several characters one role may employ more

than one hero).


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Structuralism: The essence of structuralist theories isthe belief that things cannot be understood inisolation, they have to be seen in the context of thelarger structures(hence, the term structuralism). Itsmost revolutionary feature: the importance that itattributes 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 isalways about language) and thus it makes us awareof the nature of language itself. Language is not justthe means of communication in literature, but it is

also the content of literature. Therefore, therelationship between literature and language is oneof parallelism/homology: literature is organised atevery level like language the task of creating auniversal grammar of narratives.


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Structuralist narratology (Roland Barthes, TzvetanTodorov, etc.) the two-fold distinction of fabula/sjuzet translated it into French terms ashistoire/rcit. (On English grounds, the French terms

will be transposed by Seymour Chatman, forinstance, into story/discourse.)

Narrative

Histoire/ Story

Rcit/ Discourse

Events

Characters

Setting


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Structuralist Narratology: Andr J. Greimas

According to Greimas, human beings make meaning by structuring theworld in terms of two kinds of opposed pairs: A is the opposite of Band -A is the opposite of B. It is this fundamental structure of binaryoppositions that shapes all human languages, human experience, andconsequently, the narratives through which that experience isarticulated. 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 insearch of the Object which the Receiver ultimately receives.

Stories of Auxiliary Support or Hindrance (sub-plots): A Helper supports the Subject inthe 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).

introduction to narratology

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