drawn by: Nili DooL
What is narratology?
Naratology in a narrative theory is a set of tools for analyizing narritve texts. As a scientific discipline, it studies the logic, principles and pratice of storytelling aka narrative texts.
According to R. Barthes, narratology in popular texts (advertisements, product packaging, etc.) are read in the same way as canonical texts. He emphasised the equality of all texts. According to him, a narrative text provides the possibility of a struggle between dominant and subordinate social groups.
Literary work:
story/plot + discourse/summary
Story = short content, includes the “logic of the plot” and the “syntax of characters”.
Discourse = includes the “time, aspects and forms of the narrative text”.
Different discourses = different stories.
Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative Texts (1966)
'the narrative text does not care about good and bad literature',
− in tradition, myth, fairy tale, epic, drama, pantomime, film, newspaper, conversation...
≠ (only) an aesthetic object or form of entertainment
= we treat our own lives as narrative texts too!
key = analysis of the narrative text (breaking it down into smaller parts and studying the procedures by which meaning is produced in the text)
The Pleasure of the Text (1973) – his work
a text "consists of accumulated traces (forms, memories, quotations, censorship)"
"There is no ramp on the stage of the text: there is no active person (the writer) behind the texts, and no passive person (the reader) in front of them..."
"Cryptography is the true vocation of writing."
"the wall calls out to writing"
There are two main approaches to classical narratology:
narratology of story - Roland Barthes, Introduction to Structural Analysis… (1966)
narratology of discourse - Gérard Genette [Žənε't], Discourse of the Narrative Text (1972).
Keep in mind, we're going to mentioned Genette a lot in this post as he's one of the main people who wrote about all these concepts and definitions!
Defining plot, synopsis, discourse!
Plot = sequence of events in a narrative text presented chronologically, as they would have happened in reality
Synopsis = the order of events as presented in the text, regardless of chronology (the way in which motifs are arranged and interwoven)
Discourse = speech/conversation, a connected sequence of sentences or utterances, any linguistic “event”
A brief explanation of the tripartite structure of Gérard Genette’s model. Also known as the three-level model:
story/content
text/discourse
narration/act of producing a narrative text
Story = event and characters.
Text = time, characterization of characters, focalization.
Storytelling = author-narrator-reader.
Elaboration on journalistic questions:
WHO? - CHARACTER(S)
WHAT? - PLOT
WHEN? - TIME
WHERE? - PLACE/SPACE
WHY? - MOTIF, CHARACTER(S) CHARACTER(S) CHARACTER(S)…
HOW? - LANGUAGE / MONOLOGUE / DIALOGUE
PARATEXT
What is the difference between work and text?
The text is rarely interpreted outside of its totality = work
work = text + paratext
paratext = title, author's name, foreword, afterword, chapter titles, illustrations…
Is there even a text without paratext?
Paradoxically – there is a paratext without a text.
It's the undefined zone between what is inside the text and what is outside the text = verbal and non-verbal (image, illustration, graph…) codes that surround the text is not only an area of transition but also of transaction, allowing the text to become a book and reach the audience = a privileged “place of influence on the audience”
Two groups:
PERITEX = elements present in the work (title(s), dedication, preface, notes…)
EPITEX = elements outside the work (letters, diaries, interviews, reviews…)
PARATEXT = PERITEX + EPITEX
The general narratological principle is that only what is physically impossible to attribute to the narrator is attributed to the author
Two principles of narrative text are:
Typological study
→ two principles of narrative text:
- sequence
- transformation (shapes and/or transmits the narrative sequence)
→ types of narrative organization:
- mythological
- gnoseological/epistemological
- ideological
Narrative analysis
When it comes to narrative analysis, it does not study the text but the narrative! It is less derived from poetics and more from narratology.
Time in narrative text
The time itself within a narrative text is the relationship of chronology between story and text, plot and plot or story and discourse. It's also defined as a narrative convention that allows us to imagine, beyond the time of the text (plot or discourse), a “natural” time in which events occurred chronologically, had a “full” duration and occurred a certain number of times
Discrepancies in the order of events in the story and in the text
Two main types:
retrospection/flashback
anticipation/flashforward
→ Genette defines them as:
flashback = ANALEPSE
flashforward = PROLEPSE
= time “pockets” inserted into the narrative text
ANALEPSE
subsequent narration of an event that occurred before the event that was just narrated
PROLEPSE
clear narration of a specific event from the future
rarer than analepsis due to the “privileging of narrative tension” (the narrator “reveals” the story)
Genette connects it with the phenomenon of “narrative impatience”
DURATION
Text time = pseudotemporal
→ it is impossible to measure its duration
(how long does an event that lasted one hour/day/month in the story last in the text?)
→ Genette – monologue/dialogue could be “zero degree” (equal duration of the event in the story and the narrated event in the text)
New “norm”
relationship between the duration of an event in the story (measured in time) and the length of the text dedicated to it (temporal-spatial)
= speed/tempo
→ “zero degree” = narrative text in which the speed of narration does not change
→ deviations = result of narrative acceleration (a short part of the text for a longer period of the story) or deceleration (a long part of the text for a shorter period of time)
Possible deviations from norm
Genette → 4 main types of relationship between story time (TP) and text time (TP):
1st summary (most typical form: TP shorter than TP)
2nd descriptive pause (description without action: TP lasts, TP stands)
3rd ellipsis (temporal/text omits events from the story: TP stands, TP lasts)
4th scene (convention/dramatic part of narrative text: TP = TP)
FREQUENCY
How many times did an event occur in the story, and how many times was it narrated in the text?
Genette → according to frequency, narration can be:
(1) singulative (an event in the text is narrated exactly as many times as it happened in the story)
(2) iterative (what happened multiple times or regularly is narrated once = habits/rituals)
(3) repetitive (the rarest/modernist – an event that happened once in the story is narrated multiple times in the text)
CHARACTER(S)
= element(s) of the narrative text
lead readers to compare them with reality
offer the possibility of identification, but also of refusal to identify with them
we treat them as independent phenomena/"persons" similar to real people
→ such an approach is what narratology tries to discourage.
Character characterization
Readers do not have direct access to characters – they have to (re)construct them using various pieces of information scattered throughout the text.
Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan – lists two types of textual clues:
- direct definition (in the omniscient narrator)
- indirect presentation (action, speech, appearance, environment)
Characterization by analogy ≠ not a special type of characterization
= reinforcement or additional emphasis of characterization
→ 3 ways:
- analogous names (visual appearance of the name, meaning)
- analogous landscape
- analogy between characters/"reciprocal" characterization (several characters in similar circumstances)
NARRATOR is a literary procedure that we become aware of at the latest – after the plot and characterization of the characters.
If the narrator narrates in the 1st person - we tend to equate it with the character, but also with the author.
if the narrator narrates is in the 3rd person - we identify it with the author
Narrative communication is simple:
- at the intratextual level – the narrator narrates
- at the extratextual level – the writer writes
Implicit author – only in a few cases:
- "apocryphal works" (imitation of a known author)
- "ghostwriter"/hidden writer/shadow writer
- Co-authorship
Typology of narrators
→ two criteria:
narrative levels: extradiegetic (1st level of narration/narrator), intradiegetic or hypodiegetic (2nd level/character)
scope of participation in the story: heterodiegetic (does not participate in the action) and homodiegetic (participates in the action)
Genette derives 4 types:
1st extradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrator - tells a story in which does not participate, from the 1st level of narration
2nd extradiegetic-homodiegetic - from the 1st level he tells a story in which he participates
3rd intradiegetic-heterodiegetic - from the 2nd level he tells a story in which he does not participate
4th intradiegetic-homodiegetic . from the 2nd level he tells a story in which he participates (his own)
The narrator - IN THE FIRST PERSON
more unreliable, but close
draws readers into his story – attracts them with the closeness of communication, but also with potential unreliability
unreliability = tendency to comment of the plot and characters, indicating its own existence
IN THE THIRD PERSON
reliable, but distant
leaves an “epic” impression
“omniscient” – controls times, places, thoughts and feelings of the characters
FOCALIZATION
Gérard Genette explains focalization that is:
→ replaced the terms perspective and point of view with the term focalization = difference between the questions, who is looking? and who is speaking?
→ three-part typology of focalization:
- zero focalization/unfocalized narrative text (the narrator knows more than the character or says more than the character knows = omniscient narrator)
- internal focalization/personal narration (the narrator says only what a certain character knows, the narrator = the character)
- external focalization (the narrator says less than what the character knows, e.g. in so-called “objective” narrative texts)
→ Genette’s categories – useful when determining which type of focalization the entire narrative text belongs to, but focalization can also change within a sentence.
→ Genette distinguishes 2 types of categories:
PARALLIPSE - providing less more information than is necessary – the narrator intentionally hides some information to delay the revelation of the secret or create tension.
PARALEPSY - giving information that should have been omitted/“excess” information, common with first-person narrators.
B. Uspensky, Poetics of Composition (1970)
It explains one of the most significant contributions to the theory of focalization!
→ term plans + 4 levels of manifestation:
- ideological plan
- phraseological plan
- spatiotemporal plan
- psychological plan
NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES
How to describe the “inner life” of characters?
Dorrit Cohn explains 3 basic narrative techniques for depicting consciousness:
- psychonarration – analogous to indirect speech, “retells” the content of a character’s consciousness
- quoted monologue/quoted inner monologue – analogous to indirect speech because it directly quotes the character’s thoughts (always in the 1st person and most often in the present tense)
- narrated monologue – free indirect speech (between narration and monologue)
Examples for each are:
Psychonarration: "She thought she was sick."
Quoted inner monologue: "She thought: “I’m sick”."
Narrated monologue: "She’s sick."
by: Nili DooL
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