NARRATOLOGY

Critical Theory

Narratology: what is it?!

• The study of narrative structures

• How narratives make meaning

• What the basic mechanisms and procedures are which are common to all acts of story-telling.

What Narratology is NOT!

• Not the reading and interpretation of individual stories

• BUT

• The attempt to study the nature of ‘story’ itself, as a CONCEPT and as a CULTURAL PRACTICE.

‘STORY’ versus ‘PLOT’

• The ‘story’ is the actual sequence of events as they happen

• The ‘plot’ is those events as they are edited, ordered, packaged, and presented in what we recognise as a narrative.

‘Story’

• The ‘story’, being the events as they happen, has to begin at the beginning, of course, and then move chronologically with nothing left out.

The ‘Plot’

• The ‘plot’, on the other hand, may well begin somewhere in the middle of a chain of events, and may then backtrack, with a flashback which fills us in on things that happened earlier

• Plot may have elements which flash forward, hinting at events which will happen later / foreshadowing

• So, the plot is a version of the story which should not be taken literally.

But remember:

It is the whole packaging of the narrative which creates the overall effect.

Style + viewpoint + structure + pace + characterisation + techniques etc = the

narrative

A Short History of Narratology!

•Aristotle

•Vladimir Propp

•Gerard Genette

Good old Aristotle!

• In his Poetics, Aristotle identifies CHARACTER and ACTION as the essential elements in a story

• The character must be revealed through the action = through aspects of the plot

Aristotle’s Three Key Elements in a Plot

• 1. The Hamartia

• ‘Sin’ or ‘Fault’

• In tragic drama = tragic flaw

• 2. The Anagnorisis

• ‘recognition’ or ‘realisation’

• When the truth of the situation is recognised by the protagonist

Aristotle’s Three Key Elements in a Plot…

• 3. The Peripeteia• A ‘turn-round’ or a ‘reversal’ of fortune• In classic tragedy this is usually a fall from

high to low estate, as the hero falls from greatness

• ** Categories essentially to do with moral purposes of the stories

• ** However, these three elements may not suit all narratives.

Vladimir Propp (1895-1970)

• Russian Formalist critic; Russian folktales

• Morphology = the study of forms

• His work is based on the notion that all tales are constructed by selecting items from a basic repertoire of 31 ‘functions’ (all possible actions)

Some of these functions:

• One of the members of a family absents himself from home

• The villain receives information about his victim

• The hero leaves home

• The hero is tested, interrogated, attacked etc which prepares his way for receiving either a magical agent or helper

…

• Hero and villain join in direct combat• The hero is branded• The villain is defeated• The hero returns• The hero is pursued• A false hero presents unfounded claims• The hero is married and ascends the throne.• etc

Propp’s 7 ‘Spheres of Action’

• 1. The villain• 2. The Donor (provider)• 3. The Helper• 4. The Princess (a sought-for-person) and

her father• 5. The Dispatcher• 6. The Hero (seeker or victim)• 7. The False Hero

Propps’ ‘Recipe’ for a Story

• Take items from the ‘Functions’

and

• Combine them with

• ‘roles’

• from the

• ‘Spheres of Action’!

Gerrard Genette

• Focus: how the tale is told

• The Process of telling the tale itself

• 6 key areas:

1. Is the basic narrative ‘mimetic’ or ‘diegetic’?

• Mimesis

• = showing or dramatising; represented in a scenic way; setting, dialogue/ direct speech

• = slow telling, what is done and said is ‘staged’ for the reader, creating the illusion that we are ‘seeing’ and ‘hearing’ things for ourselves.

…

• Diegesis• = ‘telling’ or ‘relating’• = more rapid or panoramic or summarising way• = gives us the essential information as efficiently

as possible, without creating the illusion that the events are taking place before our eyes.

• ** In reality, writers use the two modes in tandem for strategic reasons.

2. Focalisation

• Viewpoint or perspective

• Which point of view the story is told

• External focalisation = viewpoint outside the character depicted; we are told things only external and observable; what the characters say and do

• Internal focalisation = focus on what the characters think and feel

Focalisation…

• ‘ Thelma stood up and called out to Mario’

= EXTERNAL FOCALISATION

• ‘Thelma suddenly felt anxious that Mario was not going to see her and would walk by oblivious to where she was standing’

= INTERNAL FOCALISATION

Focalisation…

• Zero Focalisation

• Novelist may freely enter minds and emotions of more than one character, as if privy to the thoughts and feelings of all of them.

• Characteristic of ‘traditional’ or ‘classical’ narration

• Also named ‘omniscient narration’

3. Who is telling the story?

The Unidentified Narrator

• A voice; tone; an intelligent recording consciousness;

• The covert, effaced, non-intrusive, non-dramatised

• May not be the author’s true voice

• Disembodied narrator

• Authorial persona

The Identified Narrator

• A distinct, named character

• Has a personal history, gender, social-class position, distinct likes and dislikes etc

• Have witnessed, or learned about, or even participated in the events they tell

• ‘Overt’ or ‘dramatised’ or ‘intrusive narrators’

The Identified Narrator…

• Either:

** Heterodiegetic Narrator

= not a character in the story he/she narrates but an outsider to it eg Mr. Lockwood in Wuthering Heights

** Homodiegetic Narrator

= present as a character in the story eg. Jane Eyre, Steven Messenger

The Unreliable Narrator

• Narrator may be unreliable as they are:

- biased; prejudiced; cynical; puzzled; misleading

- May have disturbed vision of events

- E.G. Steven Messenger

The Effect of the Unreliable Narrator

- may be alienating and disjointed for the reader

- reader as active participant

- reader must decode for themselves

- a refracted picture of events is portrayed

How is time handled in a story?

• Narratives often contain references back and references forward so that the order of telling does not correspond to the order of happening.

• ‘Analeptic’ = Flash back

• ‘Proleptic’ = Flash forward

What do good writers do?

• Make strategic use of both analepsis and prolepsis in a story for the beginning is seldom the best place to start.

• Stories tend to begin in the middle = ‘in medias res’

Basic narrative momentum generated and readers engaged

by:• starting in the middle

with

• analeptic material sketching out what went before

and

• proleptic devices hinting at what the outcome will be.

How is the story ‘packaged’?

Stories are not always presented ‘straight’ or ‘linear’

‘Frame Narratives’ or ‘Primary Narratives’

• Contain within them ‘embedded’ narratives or ‘secondary narratives’

• Use of a ‘framing device’• Also known as the ‘meta-narrative’ or ‘tales

within tales’• Eg. ‘The Turn of the Screw’, ‘Twelfth Night’• NB: Primary narrative just means it comes first,

rather than the main narrative, which usually it isn’t / secondary narrative usually the main story.

‘Single-ended’, ‘double-ended’ or ‘intrusive’?

• SINGLE-ENDED

• Frame situation is not returned to once the embedded narrative is complete

• eg ‘The Turn of the Screw’, at the end, we don’t return to the original group telling the story around the fire.

‘Single-ended’, ‘double-ended’ or ‘intrusive’?

• DOUBLE-ENDED

• The frame situation is reintroduced at the end of the embedded tales

• Eg ‘Heart of Darkness’, we return, briefly, to the group of listeners to whom Marlow has been telling the tale.

‘Single-ended’, ‘double-ended’ or ‘intrusive’?

• INTRUSIVE• When the embedded tale is occasionally

interrupted to revert to the frame situation• Eg. ‘Heart of Darkness’, Marlow interrupts

his own telling and talks to the group of men

• Effect can be alienating and disrupting• Conrad did this to show his distaste for

omniscient narration!

6. How are speech and thought represented?

Direct and tagged

• ‘What’s your name?’ Mario asked her. ’It’s Thelma’, she replied.

Direct and Untagged

‘What’s your name?’

‘Thelma’

Indirect Speech

• He asked her what her name was, and she told him it was Thelma.

• Effect: formal distancing between reader and events.

Free Indirect Speech

• What was her name? It was Thelma

• Effect: Suits an internally focalised narrative as it seems natural and ‘glides’.

What was her name? It was Thelma. Thelma was it?

Not the kind of name to launch a thousand ships. More of a suburban, lace-curtain sort of name, really.

Narratology as a branch of

STRUCTURALISM

STRUCTURALISM

• Focus on structure, symbol, design

• Parallels, echoes, reflections, patterns and contrasts

• Narrative becomes highly schematised

We look for the factors on the left and expect to find them in the parts of the tale listed on the right.

• Parallels• Echoes• Reflections /

Repetitions in• Contrasts • Patterns

• Plot• Structure• Character / Motive• Situation /

Circumstance• Language / Imagery

How does this apply to ‘Strange Objects’?

The thesis of Structuralism:

• That narrative structures are founded upon underlying paired opposites, or dyads

• These contrasts are the skeletal structure on which all narratives are fleshed out.

Binary Opposition- Narrative Structure

• The tale may have a binary structure (a structure of paired opposites) made up of two contrasting halves

• ‘Strange Objects’- What are the two structural halves? What is the ‘framing narrative’?

= Steven Messenger’s first-person diary entries and the ‘contrasting half’ is the other material: Wouter Loos’ journal entries; police reports; advertisements; letters etc

Binary Opposition- Narrative Structure

• Marked difference in narrative pace between the narrative halves:

- Messenger’s narrative: moves with increasingly disjointed rapidity, reflecting his fractured sense of self; psychosis

- ‘Other’ narrative half: ordered text types; range of perspectives; methodical

Binary Opposition- Narrative Structure

• Consider how each narrative half effects the other; what is the relationship between the two; distribution of power

Binary Opposition within the character of Steven Messenger

• Consider contrasts and parallels between SM’s ‘two halves’ / his alter-ego / the ‘Other’

Other Binary Opposites to consider:

• Life• Male• Light • Doing• Reality

• Art• Female• Dark• Looking• Representation