Unit 2 Prose pdf, Apuntes de Idioma Inglés

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PROSE

Narrative prose : prose literature which tells a story.

Two levels in narrative texts:

STORY (what is told)

DISCOURSE (how it is told)

STORY

It consists of:

EVENTS (things that happen)

Actions are events that are brought about

actively

Happenings are events that just happen

EXISTENTS

Characters and settings

STORY AND PLOT

STORY is the chronological sequence of events

PLOT is the causal and logical structure which

connects events.

Events in a story involve an animate creature of

some sort (characters). A story usually involves a

sequence of events.

Plot is a part of HOW the story is presented.

STORY AND PLOT

A narrative can have one or more plot-lines (events can centre around one or more groups of characters). Single plot novels are rare, most novels develop multiple plots. There can be a main plot-line and one or more subplot-lines. Tightly plotted narratives are those in which everything happens for a reason or a purpose and an event is the consecuence of another. Plot-line with satisfactory ending: closed structure (poetic justice). Loosely plotted or episodic narratives can have as a linking element a common character or a common theme. Plots without a final or preliminary conclusion: open-(ended) plots.

CHARACTERS

Constructed by the information given and the ideas

we add from our own experience and imagination.

When analysing a character we have to take into

account:

Techniques of characterisation (HOW the text

informs us about characters).

Character functions (WHAT FUNCTION

characters have in the narrative).

CHARACTERISATION TECHNIQUES By the narrator : Explicit : character description or comment. Implicit : report of character's actions and/or thought, description appearance and circumstances, contrast and correspondences. By a character : By another character : Explicit: description or comment, simultaneously implicit self-characterisation. Implicit: as implied by choice of expression and description of appearance and circumstances. Self-characterisation : Explicit: description or comment. Implicit: use of language or gesture, expression, attitudes unconsciously expressed, characteristic props.

CHARACTER FUNCTIONS

Minor characters are usually mono-dimensional (only few or just one characteristic of the character is provided) and static (there is little or no development troughout the narrative). Sometimes reduced to types (representatives of a single and stereotyped character category). Allegorical characters can be included here. These type of characters are also defined as flat. Major characters use to be multi-dimensional (has a number of defining characteristics) and dynamic (undergoes a development throughout the narrative). Also referred to as round characters.

NARRATORS AND NARRATIVE SITUATIONS The two aspects to be considered are narrative voice (who speaks?) and focalisation (who sees?). Together are also called narrative situation. NARRATIVE VOICES Who speaks or who tells the story. Whe can make some distinctions: (following Genette (1980)) Homodiegetic narrator : a narrator who is also a character in the story. If the homodiegetic narrator is also the protagonist, it is an autodiegetic narrator. Heterodiegetic narrator : a narrator who is not a character in the story but knows everything about it. (This distinction, following Stanzel (1984), is between first-person narrative situation and authorial narrative situation ) Another distinction can be made between an overt narrator (someone who shows his or her opinions, makes explicit judgements, etc) and a covert narrator (who is hardly noticeable)

NARRATORS AND NARRATIVE SITUATIONS NARRATIVE MODES They are the kinds of utterance through which a narrative is conveyed. Mimesis is the direct presentation of speech and action, and diegesis is the verbal representation of events. Four main narrative modes can be differentiated: SPEECH Direct speech is the most mimetic narrative mode; it gives an almost complete illusion of direct representation. Indirect (reported) speech is produced when the speech or thought is rendered indirectly.

NARRATORS AND NARRATIVE SITUATIONS REPORT It is the mode that informs the reader about events and actions in the story (use of action verbs). It is often difficult to separate between report and description. DESCRIPTION It is a narrative mode that represents objects in space ( existents ). Traditional rhetoric distinguishes between the description of place , time , and character. COMMENT Evaluations of the story's events and characters, general observations or judgements are made in this narrative mode. (In practice, narrative modes are mixed).

TIME Two aspects to consider in the analysis of narrative prose: the use of tense and the arrengement and presentation of time sequences in a narrative. TENSE IN NARRATIVE Most narratives are told in in the past tense ( narrative past ). But some narratives are written in the narrative present. The tense of a narrative is determined by the tense of the full verbs A tense switch is a change from narrative past to narrative present or back, usually to indicate a change in perspective or time level. Gnomic present is the use of statements of general application in the present tense.

TIME TIME ANALYSIS The analysis of the use of time in a narrative centres around three aspects: order, duration and frquency. We must distinguish between story-time (the sequence of events and the length of time that passes in the story) and discourse-time (the length of time that is taken up by the telling (or reading) of the story and the sequence of events as they are presented in discourse).

TIME ORDER Events in a narrative can be told chronologically (in the order in which they occurred) or they can be told in an anachrological way, when the order is changed. The techniques most commonly employed to change this order are flashforward (prolepsis) and flashback (analepsis).

TIME BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS The place in the story at which a narrative's discourse begins is the point of attack. Depending on the situation of the point of attack in a narrative we can distinguish beginnins ab ovo (the point of attack is at the beginning of the story), in media res (the point of attack is placed in a point in which developments are already under way), and in ultima res (the point of attack is at the end of the story). Endings can be open (there is not a definite conclusio) or closed (everything is resolved).