8/28/02: Narrative Hand Out

Plato and Aristotle are important. They argued. About mimesis, or imitation, and diegesis, or narration. Some people prefer diegetic narrative genres, like epics, novels and short stories. Others prefer mimetic narrative genres, like plays, movies, and cartoons.

A narrative is anything that tells a story. A story is a chronological sequence of actions and events involving characters. It describes what happened. Actions refer to intentional acts by characters. Events refer to natural or unnatural occurances not willed by characters. An episode is a group of two or more interconnected actions. A plot is the logical and causal structure of a story. It described why whatever happened in the story happened. A discourse is the literary mode through which a series of interconnected episodes are narrated. It describes how the narrative is told.

One should always distinguish between: (1) the sequence of events as ordered in the narrative (discourse); (2) the action as it happened in its actual chronological sequence (the story); and (3) the story’s causal structure (plot).

The Structure of a Literary Text

Every narrative contains an authorial audience and a narrative audience. The authorial audience is the audience of real readers addressed by the author. The narrative audience is the fictional audience addressed by the narrator. A person, such as an author or a reader, is a real person and occupies the level of nonfictional communication. A character is a fictional construct and occupies the level of fictional mediation or the level of action. A matrix narrative contains an embedded narrative. A matrix narrative is a first-degree narrative, meaning it is not embedded in another narrative. A second-degree narrative is a narrative embedded in a first-degree narrative. A third-degree narrative is one embedded in a second-degree narrative, etc.

Embedded narratives interact with the matrix narrative as follows. Actional integration occurs when the embedded narrative fulfills an important function in the matrix narrative. Exposition provides information (usually historical) about events outside the episodes narrated in the matrix narrative. Many of the chapters skipped in Don Quixote are distractions, stories told to bide time. An obstruction occurs when an embedded narrative momentarily suspends the continuation of the matrix narrative, often heightening suspense. An embedded narrative is analogous to the matrix narrative when it corroborates or contradicts a story or episode in the matrix narrative. Embedded narratives often create a mise en abyme, an infinite loop in which an embedded narrative embeds its matrix narrative.

Who speaks?

A narrator is the speaker or 'voice' of the narrative discourse. He or she is the agent who establishes communicative contact with an addressee (the 'narratee'), who manages the exposition, who decides what is to be told, how it is to be told (especially, from what point of view, and in what sequence), and what is to be left out. The two types of narrators are first-person/homodiegetic narrators and authorial/heterodiegetic narrators. First-person/homodiegetic narrators narrate first-person narrative situations. Authorial/heterodiegetic narrators narrate authorial and figural narrative situations.

An overt narrator is one who refers to him/herself in the first person ("I", "we" etc.), one who directly or indirectly addresses the narratee, one who offers reader-friendly exposition whenever it is needed, one who exhibits a discoursal bias toward characters and events, especially in his/her use of rhetorical figures, imagery, evaluative phrases and emotive or subjective expressions, one who 'intrudes' into the story in order to pass philosophical or metanarrative comments. A covert narrator, in contrast, is one who exhibits none of the features of overtness listed above: specifically, he or she is one who neither refers to him- or herself nor addresses any narratees, one who has a more or less neutral (nondistinctive) voice and style, one who is sexually indeterminate, one who does not provide exposition even when it is urgently needed, one who does not intrude or interfere, one who lets the story events unfold in their natural sequence and tempo. A covert narrator “lets the story tell itself.” These are relative terms. Some narrators are more or less overt than other overt narrators, some more or less covert than other covert narrators.

An author of a fictional narrative chooses between three narrative situations. A first-person narrative is told by a narrator who is also a character in the story. He or she narrates events and actions as he or she experienced them. An authorial narrative is told by a narrator who does not appear as a character in the story. A figural narrative presents a story as if seen through the eyes of a character.

In first-person narration, the first person refers to both the narrator (the narrating-I) and a character (the experiencing-I) in the story. The narrator may be the protagonist of the story (I-as-protagonist)or a minor character (I-as-witness). Narrative distance refers to the temporal and psychological distance between the narrating-I and the experiencing-I. First-person narration should suffer from the same limitations on knowledge that we suffer in the world, that is, they should not know other people’s thoughts, etc. Fictional autobiographies and skaz narratives are subgenres of first-person narration. A skaz narrative represents a story-telling situation, in which a speaker tells a story to a present audience. A skaz narrator is often characterized by their diction and syntax, and is closely related to the poetic genre of the dramatic monologue.

An authorial narration involves telling a story from the point of view of an authorial narrator, that is, someone who is not, and never was, a character in the story itself. (Note, however, that an authorial narrator may refer to him- or herself in the first person.) Often, the authorial narrator's status of an outsider makes her/him an authority commanding practically godlike abilities such as omniscience and omnipresence. Many authors allow their authorial narrators to speak directly to their addressees, to comment on action and characters, to engage in philosophical reflection, and to interrupt the course of the action by detailed descriptions.

A figural narration presents the story’s events as seen through the eyes of a third-person or internal focalizer. The narrative agency of figural narration is a highly covert one. A figural narrative presents the story's action as seen through the eyes of a reflector figure. Often, a figural text presents a distorted or restricted view of events – to many authors, such a distorted perspective is far more realistic and interesting than an omniscient or objectively true account of events. Because figural texts have a covert narrator only, figural stories typically begin in the middle of things, have little or no exposition, and attempt to present a direct (i.e., both immediate and unmediated) view into the perceptions, thoughts, and psychology of a character's mind. Some characteristics of figural narratives follow. Referentless pronouns are third-person pronouns whose referent has not yet been established; for example, a novel that begins “He sat in a chair.” Familiarizing articles present new information as in the guise of given information; for example, a novel that begins “He sat in the green chair.”

These three narrative situations are not mutually exclusive. Almost always, they are combined to create an effect.

Who sees?

Focalization refers to the author’s method of selecting and restricting narrative information, of seeing events and actions from somebody’s point of view, of foregrounding the focalizing agent, and of creating an empathetical or ironic view of the focalizer. A focalizer is the agent whose point of view orients the narrative. A text is anchored on a focalizer’s point of view when it presents the focalizer’s thoughts, reflections, knowledge, actual or imaginary perceptions, and his or her cultural and ideological orientation. A narrator-focalizer is an external focalizer. A character-focalizer is an internal-focalizer.

A narrative is described as having a fixed focalization if it presents actions and events from the constant point of view of a single focalizer. Variable focalization refers to the presentation of the story through the eyes of several focalizers. Multiple focalization is a technique in which the same event, action or episode is represented multiple times, each one through the eyes of a different internal focalizer.

Narrative Voice

Textual or intertextual voices belong to the narrator and the characters. An extratextual voice belongs to the author. In Don Quixote, the distinction between intertextual and extratextual voice breaks down.

Some prominent vocal characteristics are dialect (regional diction and pronunciation), sociolect (speech characteristics of a social group), idiolect (singular or idiosyncratic style) and genderlect (gender-specific style preferred by women or men).

Monologism is the effect created when all the voices sound more or less the same. Dialogism is the effected created when a text presents authors, narrators and characters with distinct, identifiable speech patterns.

Narrative Tenses

The two major narrative tenses are the narrative past and the narrative present. A relation between the discourse-now and the story-now determines which tense will be used. The discourse-now refers to the narrator’s present moment. The story-now refers to a character’s present moment. A retrospective narration occurs when the discourse-now is in the narrative present and the story-now in the narrative past. A concurrent narration occurs when the discourse-now and story-now are both in the narrative present. The narrative present foregrounds the story-now and downplays the discourse-now. The historical present is a local emergence of the narrative present in the context of the narrative past, producing the effect of immediacy.

Order refers to the handling of the story’s chronology. Duration describes the relation between story-time and discourse-time. Frequency refers to the ways of presenting single or repetitive action units.

Categories of order include anachrony. Anachrony is a deviation from the strict chronology of the story. The two main types are flashbacks and flashforwards. If the anachronically presented event is factual, it is an objective anachrony. If it is a character’s vision of the future or memories of the past, it is a subjective anachrony. Repetitive anachronies recall already narrated events. Completive anachronies present events omitted in the primary narrative. External anachronies present events that occur before the beginning or after the end of the primary narrative. Internal anachronies occur within the time of the primary narrative.

A flashback/analepsis presents events that occurred before the current story-now. An external flashback/analepsis presents events before the beginning of the primary narrative. A flashforward/prolepsis presents a future event before it occurs. An objective flashforward/prolepsis presents future events certain to occur (for example, a novel in which a narrative whose story-now is 1939 flashes forward to WWII). A subjective flashforward/prolepsis is a character’s vision of a likely future event (for example, a novel in which a character imagines what his or her wedding day will be like).

Duration refers to the distinction between story-time and discourse-time. Discourse-time is the time it takes a reader to read a passage (or, an entire text). Story-time refers to the fictional time taken up by an episode (or, the entire narrative), and is determined by textual pace, readerly intuition, and text-internal clues. For instance, though its story-time may be a single day, it may take a reader a month to read James Joyce’s Ulysses. Conversely, with a single sentence (a 3-second discourse-time) an author can progress a story through any length of story-time: “Later that year/decade/century/etc.” The speed or tempo of a text is determined by comparing its discourse-time to its story-time. In isochronous/congruent presentation, story-time and discourse-time are equal. This often occurs in passages containing dialogue. Acceleration occurs when an episode’s discourse-time is considerably shorter than its story-time, and typically involves a summary or panoramic mode of presentation. Deceleration occurs when an episode’s discourse-time is considerably shorter than its story-time. This is very rare, and most examples people provide are actually examples of isochronous presentation of a character’s subjective time. However, think of deceleration in terms of the now-overused film technique of representing bullet/spear/projectile-vomiting-dodging, though this too is dangerously close to an isochronous presentation of a superhumanly fast character’s subjective time. Ellipsis/omission occurs when a stretch of story-time is not represented in the discourse at all. A pause occurs when discourse-time elapses, typically on a description or commentary, while story-time stops.

Narrative Space

The story-space describes the spatial environment of the story’s actions and events. The discourse-space describes the narrator’s current spatial environment. Thus, the story-here is the current space in the story-space, the discourse-here the current space in the discourse space. The discourse-space and discourse-here identify the discourse’s point of origin. For example, grandpa is on the left side of the back porch talking about his childhood. His discourse-space is the back porch. His discourse-here is the left side of the back porch. If he stands up and walks to the right side of the back porch, his discourse-space remains the same, but his discourse-here changes.

Characterization

In figural characterization, the characterizing subject is a character. On the level of explicit characterization, a character either characterizes him- or herself, or some other character. The reliability or credibility of a character's judgment largely depends on pragmatic circumstances. Is the character’s judgment trustworthy? Might he or she have ulterior motives? In a narratorial characterization the characterizing subject is a narrator. The reliability of a narrator’s judgment also depends on pragmatic circumstances. Is the narrator a reliable or unreliable narrator?

An explicit characterization is a verbal statement that ostensibly attributes (i.e., is both meant to and understood to attribute) a trait or property to a character who may be either the speaker him- or herself (auto-characterization), or some other character (altero-characterization). An explicit characterization is usually based on a descriptive statement (particularly, a sentence using be or have as its main verb) that identifies, categorizes, individualizes, and evaluates a person. An implicit characterization is a (usually unintentional) auto-characterization in which somebody's physical appearance or behavior is indicative of a characteristic trait. X characterizes him- or herself by behaving or speaking in a certain manner. Nonverbal behavior (what a character does) may characterize a person as, for instance, a homosexual, a fine football player, or a coward. Characters are also implicitly characterized by their dress, their physical appearance (e.g., a hunchback) and their chosen environment (e.g., their rooms, their pet dogs, their cars). Verbal behavior (the way a character speaks, or what a character says in a certain situation) may characterize a person as, for instance, having a certain educational background (jargon, slang, dialect), as belonging to a certain class or set of people (sociolect), or as being truthful, evasive, ill-mannered, etc.

Discourse

An attributive discourse is characterized by a diegetic phrase or 'tag' identifying an agent and an act of speech, thought, or perception. Syntactically, there are two main forms: (a) an 'introductory tag' is a discourse tag in initial position (Jane thought (that)); (b) a 'parenthetical tag' is a discourse tag in either medial or final position (That, she thought, was it; “That is it”, she thought). Semantically, attributive discourse tags are constructions based on (a) 'verba dicendi' or 'inquits' (she said, asked, replied, muttered, confessed, claimed, remarked, promised, announced, ...), (b) 'verba cogitandi' or 'cogitats' (she thought, realized, felt, ...), and (c) 'verba sentiendi/percipiendi' or 'percepits' (she saw, heard, felt, remembered, imagined, dreamed, ...). Note, Latin verbum means 'word' (i.e., not just 'verb'), so a phrase like "The thought struck him that" can easily count as an introductory 'cogitat tag'.

Direct discourse is characterized by a direct quotation of a character's speech ('direct speech') or (verbalized) thought ('direct thought'). Direct speech is often placed within quotation marks, explicitly signaling the transition from quoting to quoted discourse. Tagged direct discourse is framed by a clause of attributive discourse; untagged direct discourse (alternatively, free direct discourse) is free of attributive discourse. The main property of direct discourse is that the deictic elements of the quoted inset, especially its tenses and pronouns, are wholly independent of the deixis of the quoting discourse.

Indirect discourse is a form of representing a character's words ('indirect speech') or (verbalized) thoughts ('indirect thought') which uses a reporting clause of introductory attributive discourse, places the discourse quoted in a subordinate clause bound to the deictic orientation of the narrator, and generally summarizes, interprets, and grammatically straightens the character's language. Indirect discourse adjusts pronouns, tenses, and referring expression to the point of view of the reporting speaker (the narrator), and paraphrases rather than reproduces the original's expressivity and illocutionary force. A narrative report of discourse is a kind of indirect discourse in which a narrator summarizes or reports a character's words ('narrative report of speech') or thoughts ('narrative report of thought').

All of this is important, but what does it mean? That is, how does it affect the way a reader reads a novel?