Narrative Methods and types of narration

 

1. The notion of the narrative perspective/ point of view.

2. Types of narrative perspective.

3. The major types of narrators.

4. The advantage of the first person point of view.

5. The advantage of the third-person point of view.

6. Literary representational forms (narration, description, explanation, argumentation and definition).

7. Implication techniques:

8. Ways of creating the mood of the story.

9. The notion of title and its functions in a literary text.

 

A story/ a narrative is presented in a literary text through the mediation of some "prism", "perspective", "angle of vision", "point of view" verbalized by the narrator. Most studies treat two related questions:1/ who sees? and 2/ who speaks? Obviously, a person (a narrator) is capable of both speaking and seeing and even doing both things at the same time. Thus, speaking and seeing narration and focalization may be attributed to the same agent. But we shouldn't confuse narration and focalization.

Focalization and narration are separate in first-person retrospective narratives. For example, in ''Great Expectations" by Ch. Dickens though there is a record of things the child saw, felt, understood them, but the words are not from the child's vocabulary. So, the narrator is Pip the adult, while the focalizer is Pip, the child.

Point of view is the position or vantage point from which the author/the narrator/focalizer presents the actions of the story. It is the point from which we are permitted to see, i.e. a special narrative perspective the actions, events, characters the author creates.

Narrative perspective (NP) presupposes the interaction of a narrative, compositional, temporal and spatial organization of the text, dependent on the author's communicative strategy.

Narrative method involves such aspects as: 1) who narrates the story; 2) the way how narrator stands in relation to the events and to other characters of the story.

We may group various types of narrative perspectives into two main ones:

- unlimited NP ─ when the author distances himself from the narrated events, he is above the characters, he is free to switch from one episode to another, to change time and space, to establish cause and effect relations as he sees fit.

 This type of NP seems to coincide with "external focalization", i.e. occurring from the outside of the story.

-limited NP ─ suggests the description from the point of view of 1) either the narrator identified in the story or 2) one of the characters who, at the same time, is the narrator.

This phenomenon is known as "internal focalization" that occurs inside the represented events. This type generally takes the form of a character-focalizer, like little Pip, the child in many parts of Dickens' Great Expectations.

In modern poetics according to the character the narrative perspective is presented we distinguish the following types of focalization:

constant NP, or fixed focalization, tied to a single focalizer throughout the novel (as in Henry James' What Maisie Knew);

changeable NP (focalization), when it varies between two or more positions (as in The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner).

Traditionally literary criticism has focused on three major types narrators:

I. The narrator is outside the story, outside the world of the characters, he does not participate in the story he narrates (heterodiegetic narrator, according to Genette).

· omniscient, where the author sees and knows everything, moving across space and time, commenting on character and action, an all-knowing godlike creator;

II. The narrator takes part in the story, and at least in some manifestations he is similar to other characters of the story (homodiegetic narrator). Two sub­types can be found in this last case:

a) the narrator is in the centre of the story, i.e. he is one of its main characters or a protagonist;

· first person, in which the authorallows one character to tell the story, thus limiting himself to what can be seen, heard, felt, thought or known by that single character;

b) the narrator is on the periphery of the story, he is a witness rather than a character;

· third person, in which actions, thoughts and perceptions are filtered through the mind of one character or the minds of several characters.

The form of omniscience is one of the oldest point of view, stemming from the oral tradition. However, as fiction moved towards the 20th C. We do not see and hear the author as directly as we once did. "The artist, like God of creation, remains within, or behind his handiwork invisible " (James Joyce).

The advantage of the first person point of view is that it helps to create special kind of intimacy and there are no significant limitations to it (but the narrator cannot see into the minds of others). If a story is a first person narrative the reader gets better understanding of the events and characters, because he sees them through the perception of the character who narrates. The fist-person narrator tends to be more confiding. The narrator assumes the informal tone, addresses the reader directly, confiding his personal impressions and thoughts.

One of the basic limitations is that a story is told by a character (that is by the fist-person narrator) who is a person and he can see and hear in this situation only as a person can. The fist-person narrator may be reliable and unreliable. He may misinterpretsome events. He relates his subjective point of view.

The third-person point of view can be limited or unlimited. With the limited third person point of view the action is filtered through the mind or consciousness of one character only. As readers we know only what the central character thinks and does; we cannot enter into the mind of one individual tend to unity the world of the story. From this narrative perspective the illusion is created that we are sharing the thoughts, feeling and perceptions of the character who is confronting the world from a clear angle of vision.

Another variety of third-person point of view is objective (dramatic) when the author refuses to enter the mind of any character. In this case, the writer views characters as we would view other people in normal life. We can interpret them only through their actions and words, their behavior and dress.

Each type of the above mentioned point of view has its special functions, powers, limitations. Great writers can either stay within the limits of these modes or combine different modes. Some writers invent new techniques to enrich point of view: e.g. "stream of consciousness" that puts us next to the highly associative thought processes of the characters; "experimental second-person" or "you" point of view. If the viewpoints are presented as independent the story is said to be"polyphonic".

According to the above mentioned narrative methods one can distinguish the following four types of narrators:

· the main character, when the authorplaces himself in the position of the main character;

· a minor character, when the authorgives this particular character's version of the events and personages;

· the omniscient narrator who narrates the story anonymously;

· the observer-author, who recordsthe speech and actions of the characters without analyzing them. The stories told by the observer-author may be presented in either of the following two forms: the dramatic or the pictorial.

Narrations may be classified into: human/ non-human (animal, fictional, mythological creatures (vampires, souls, robots,), objects). All of them can be static (objects) or dynamic (people, animals, fantastic creatures).

The narrative method conditions the language of the story. If the story is told by an omniscient author the language is always literary. When the story is told by a character the language becomes a means of characterization. It reflects the narrator's education, occupation, emotional state and his attitude.

The narrative method may also affect the presentational sequencing of events. Thus the omniscient author will arrange the events of the story as they occur, in chronological order. A first-person narrative is interrupted by digressions, or may have haphazard flashbacks or foreshadowing.

Apart of that, the narrative method may also affect the choice of literary representational forms, such as narration, description, explanation, argumentation and definition.

Narration arranges its material in time. Description organizes it in space. Explanation organizes its subject not in time and space, but by logic and to show relationships. Argumentation is designed to persuade by appealing to reason. Its task is by the use of reason to defend what is true and to attack what is false. The essence of argument is reason and it may work in two ways: by deduction and by induction.

Explanation is writing that explains answering the question how? and why? Its object may be people, things, ideas, some combination of these. The writer develops his material by offering examples as evidence, by comparing and contrasting, by making analogies, by giving reasons, by classifying anddividing his subject, by showing cause and effect.

MOOD OF THE STORY: the writer’s attitude toward a subject, character, or events, and it is conveyed through the author’s choice of words and details. 

} TONE: the writer’s attitude toward a subject, character, or events, and it is conveyed through the author’s choice of words and details. 

Tone can be serious, humorous, sarcastic, indignant, objective, etc. 

} VERBAL IRONY: occurs when a narrator says one things while meaning the opposite: e.g.:It is easy to stop smoking. I’ve done it many times.” 

} SARCASM: the use of verbal irony in which a person appears to be praising something but is actually insulting it: e.g., “As I fell down the stairs headfirst, I heard her say, ‘Look at that coordination.”

} SITUATIONAL IRONY: occurs when a situation turns out differently from what one would normally expect—though often the twist is oddly appropriate: e.g., a deep sea diver’s drowning in a bathtub is ironic. 

} DRAMATIC IRONY: occurs when a character says or does something that has different meanings from what he or she thinks it means, though the audience and other characters understand the full implications of the speech or action: e.g., Oedipus curses the murderer of Laius, not realizing that he is himself the murderer and so is cursing himself.

Implication is the suggestion that is not expressed directly, but understood. It may be conveyed by different techniques: parallelism, contrast, recurrence of events or situations, artistic details, symbols, a special arrangement of elements of plot structure.

IMPLICATION TECHNIQUES:

SUSPENSE: the quality of a story, that makes the reader uncertain or tense about the outcome of events. 

Suspense is the growing interest and excitement readers experience while awaiting a climax or resolution in a work of literature. It is a feeling of anxious uncertainty about the outcome of events. Writers create suspense by raising questions in the minds of their readers.

Symbol is a person, a place, a thing, or an event that has meaning in itself and stands for something beyond itself as well.

Repetition is when a word, phrase of line is repeated within the text in close proximity.

} Repetition is used to emphasize or add special meaning to what is being said.

} Repetition makes the reader consciously aware of a point being made by the author or the character.

IMAGERY: consists of the words or phrases a writer uses to represent persons, objects, actions, feelings, and ideas descriptively by appealing to the senses. 

Descriptive words or phrases appeal to the 5 senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell- creating a picture in the reader’s mind.

Title is the first element to catch the reader’s eye, but its meaning and function may be determined only retrospectively because it acquires its precise meaning when related to the whole story. Then it may acquire a totally different meaning, or the story itself may clarify the meaning of the title. Title may perform different functions in a literary text such as:

} as a means of conveying the author's message;

} as a means of cohesion, i.e. it unites the components of a story to form an artistic whole;

} as a means of focussing the reader's attention on the most relevant characters or details;

} it may characterize the protagonist;

} it orients or disorients the reader towards the message of the story.

The aim of the analysis is at breaking a literary text down into its varied components to see how each piece works and contributes to the text’s message.

The world is full of texts to interpret, and there are myriad ways to interpret each of them. Being critically text interpretation means engaging with that world and those texts in a thoughtful way to understand how many possible ways of being and thinking there are.

 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSIONS

1. Distinctive features of a literary text and other types of texts.

2. The subject-matter and aims of text interpretation as an academic subject.

3. Text interpretation analysis as opposed to stylistic analysis.

4. Approaches to text interpretation (based on the preference of one of the textual senses).

5. Basic schools of literary criticism.

6. The main categories of a literary text.

7. The main components of a literary text.

8. The notion of plot of a literary text.

9. Event as opposeto incident: the main distinguishing features of event.

10. The notion of plot elements of a literary text.

11. Stylistic functions of setting in a literary text.

12. The notion of the narrative structure of a literary text.

13. The notion of presentational sequencing and its devices.

14. The notion of image/ character in text interpretation.

15. Different classifications of characters.

16. Flat characters as opposed to round characters.

17. The notion of a character trait and types of characterization: direct definition and indirect presentation.

18. Ways of direct definition.

19. Ways of indirect presentation.

20. The notion of the narrative perspective/ point of view.

21. Types of narrative perspective.

22. The major types of narrators.

23. The advantage of the first person point of view.

24. The advantage of the third-person point of view.

25. Literaryrepresentational forms (narration, description, explanation, argumentation and definition).

26. Ways of creating the mood of the story.

27. The notion of title and its functions in a literary text.