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2. Prose
Story and discourse.
Two levels in narration. We differentiate between:
- Story → WHAT is told, fondo.
- Discourse → HOW is told, forma.
This levels need to be further subdivided.
1. Story.
Consist of:
- Events → Things that happens, which can be actions, brought actively by a character, or happenings, things that just happens, has raining.
- Existents → Characters and setting. 2. Discourse
It comprises various elements of transmission. Discourse is the only thing in narration which is directly accessible for us. Elements of discourse thus determine our perception of the story.
Which are those elements?
- (^) Plot
- Narrative voices.
- Focalisation
- Narrative modes
- Representation of consciousness
- (^) Time
- Language.
Story and plot.
Story → Chronological sequence of events. An story needs events to be considered as one. Normally involves characters, a sequence of events rather just one event.
Plot → The casual and logical structure which connects events. It is considered as part of the discourse.
A narrative can have one or more plot-lines. Single plot novel are rare, usually stories developed multiple plots. These plots don’t necessarily have the same importance, an story can develop a main plot-line and have one or more subplot-lines.
Some narratives are tightly-plotted , in which every event happens for a concrete reason, and one event is the consequence for another. This structure usually generates suspense.
Closed structure → it happens when every plot-line is brought to and ending.
Open structure → are those in which plots are not brought to an ending or conclusion.
Poetic Justice → when at the end of the story, heroes are rewarded and villains are punished.
Loosely plotted or episodic → Narratives that have less emphasis on the casual connection of events, which can be linked by a common character or a theme.
Space
It forms and important component in the creation and communication of meaning. Space is presented verbally, thus it exists on reader’s imagination.
Space provides additional meaning to a narrative, in four aspects.
- It creates an atmosphere. For example, darkness and narrow spaces are commonly associated with threating and restrictive atmospheres, while an open and sunlit space is associated with freedom.
- These atmospheres can be used to provide a characteristic background for characters. The environment in which a character moves can function as a means of characterisation. For instance, a dark place is associated with a mean character, a villain.
- Setting can also help to define plot-lines. In narratives with more than one plot, a concrete space for each plot can serve as an orientation for the reader.
- Space can also serve as a symbol. Symbolic spaces are culturally determined. For instance, in our culture, we associate cities with fashion, movement, and an exciting life, while we associate country spaces with calm life.
Character.
People in a narrative are called characters, thus they are representation of people.
We construct characters mentally by the information given but also with some ideas from our own experience and imagination.
What we analyse in a character?
- Techniques of characterisation. How the text inform us about them. They are used in text to enable readers to form a mental construction of the characters.
By the narrator:
- Explicit → character description or comment
- Implicit → the character is defined by actions, other’s characters attitudes to him or her, etc.
By another character:
- Explicit → description or comment.
- Implicit → as implied by choice of expression and description of appearance and circumstances.
Self-characterisation.
- Autodiegetic narrator → A narrator which is the protagonist of the story.
- Heterodiegetic narrator → A narrator who is not a character of the story but knows everything about it.
Franz Stanzel’s differentiates between first-person narrative situation and authorial narrative situation.
Another distention can be made between:
- Overt narrator → Someone who shows his or her opinions, makes explicit judgements, etc.)
- Covert narrator → Who is hardly noticeable.
Narrator ≠ Author.
Unreliable narrator → narrator that lack information, lie, or omit crucial information.
- Focalisation → who sees? It is possible for a narrator to focus in the point of view of one character and to remain ignorant of what happens outside the range of perception of this character.
External focaliser → someone who is external to the story (often called narrator-focaliser), the focus of perception seems to be that of the narrator.
Internal focaliser → on the other hand, some who has limited focus of perception of a character in the story; character-focaliser.
Narrative modes.
They are kinds of utterance through which a narrative is conveyed.
Mimesis → The direct presentation of speech and action.
Diegesis → Verbal representation of events.
Four main narrative modes can be differentiated:
- Speech. We distinguish between:
- Direct speech → the most mimetic narrative mode. It gives an almost complete illusion of direct representation.
- Indirect (or reported) speech → is produced when the speech or thought is rendered indirectly.
- Report. It is the mode that informs the reader about events and actions in the story (use of action verbs). It is difficult to separate between report and description.
- Description. It is a narrative mode that represents objects in space (existents). Distinction between description of place, time and character, which can be combined.
- Comment. In this mode we can find evaluations of the story’s events and characters, general observations or judgements, explicit or implicit.
This narrative mode can be mixed in practice.
Representation of consciousness.
It is the representation of thought, which can be conceptualised as a kind of silent speech or inner speech. It is also possible to simply represent thoughts as speech, using direct or indirect discourse.
In narrative, the reader is allowed to look into a character’s head and observe his mental processes and emotions.
Three methods of thought representation have been identified, depending on the level of noticeable narrator interference.
- Interior monologue. It is the direct presentation of thought as in direct speech. It is a long passage of uninterrupted thought. It intends to present a character’s thought directly.
- Psychonarration. The heterodiegetic narrator adds some general observations not originating in the character.
- Narrated monologue. Also called free indirect discourse, it represents a mixture between psychonarration and interior monologue. We hear a “dual voice”, the voices of the narrator and the characters are momentarily merged.
Time
Two aspects to consider in the analysis of time: the use of tense and the arrangement and presentation of time sequences in narration.
Tense in narrative. Most narratives are written in past tense (narrative past), but others are written in narrative present. The tense of a narrative is determined by the tense of the full verbs.
A tense switch is a change from one tense to another, usually to indicate a change in perspective of time level.
Gnomic present → It is the use of statements of general application in the present tense. Grammatically, it is no different from the narrative present, but it doesn’t represent a tense switch.
Time analysis. It goes around three aspects: order, duration and frequency.
Also, we must distinguish between:
- Story-time: The sequence of events and the length that passes in the story.
- Discourse-time: the length of time that is taking by the telling (or reading) of the story, and the sequence of events as they are presented in discourse.
- Duration. There are five possible relations between story-tine and discourse-time:
- Scene/real-time → story-time and discourse-time are equal (usually in dialogue).
- Summary/speed-up → Story-time is longer than discourse-time.
- Stretch/slow-down → Discourse-time exceeds tory-time.
- Ellipsis → Discourse-time skips to a later part in story time
▲ Social novel (industrial novel/condition of England novel) → It is associated with the development of 19th^ C. realism. It gives a portrait of society, especially o lower parts of society. (Oliver Twist).
▲ Science-fiction → It is a type of prose narrative of varying lengths. Its topics include quests for other worlds, the influence of alien beings on earth or alternatives realities. (1984 by Orwell).
▲ Metafiction → Fictional writing which self-consciously draws attention to its status as an artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality.
▲ Romance → Fictional narrative in prose or verse that represents a chivalric theme or relates improbable adventures of idealised characters in some remote and enchanted setting.
▲ Short-story → A piece of prose fiction marked by a relative shortness and density.
