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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