NARRATOLOGY
- Branch of structuralism with roots also in linguistic theory
- It is the study of how narratives make meaning and what the basic mechanisms and procedures are which are common to all acts of story-telling. It is not, then, the reading or interpretation of individual stories, but the attempt to study the nature of ‘story’ itself, as a concept and a cultural practice (distinction between an actual meal—cod and chips—and the narrative account of it—succulent, fresh-caught cod and crispy brown chips—is like a narratologist’s distinction between ‘story’ and ‘plot’ where story is actual sequence of events as happen and plot is those events as they are edited, ordered, packaged, and presented in what we recognize as a narrative
- These days, people prefer to talk of “discourse” rather than plot because discourse can include style, viewpoint, pace, etc. which are the “packaging” of the story
History begins with Aristotle who said there was ‘character’ and ‘action’ as essential elements of any story and that character is revealed through action or plot. He had 3 key elements in plot—a sin or fault in a character (hamartia); a ‘recognition’ or ‘realization’ when protagonist sees what his or her sin or fault is (anagnorisis); and a ‘turn-round’ or ‘reversal’ of fortune as hero falls from greatness (peripeteia). He came up with this deductively, by looking at lots of narratives to see what they had in common.
Another key figure is Gerard Genette, living and writing at end of 20th c. He asks is the narrative mimetic (i.e. dramatized or presented in a scenic way with setting, dialogue/direct speech) or is it diegetic (i.e. presented in rapid or panoramic or summarizing way, narrator says what is happening without trying to show it as it happens).
- Writers like Hemingway present “single-scene” stories where everything is mimetic, e.g., “Hills like White Elephants” where we see what couple sees, hear what they say and that’s IT
- Longer structures like novels demand combination of both approaches, e.g., “For five years Mario took the same route to work every morning, but he never saw Thelma again. Then one morning something very strange happened as he came out of the tube station and began to walk up Charing Cross Road. It was a bright, sunny day, and…. Up to the ellipsis, it’s diegetic but then shifts suddenly to become mimetic because what follows is in ‘real’ time within the story and we begin to see what Mario is seeing right at that moment.
Another key element of narratology is to answer this question: how is the narrative focalized, i.e. what is the point of view or perspective
- Can be external if viewpoint is outside the character depicted, so we are told only things which are external and observable, things you could hear/see if you were in the scene—Thelma stood up and called out to Mario
- Can be internal if focus is on what characters think and feel, things inaccessible to us if we were present in the scene—Thelma suddenly felt anxious that Mario was not going to see her and would walk by oblivious on the other side of Charing Cross Road
Who is telling the story? Narrators are either a telling medium, i.e., recorded consciousness trying to be neutral or transparent. Can be covert, effaced, non-intrusive, non-dramatised. Or narrator can be distinct, named character with personal history, i.e., intrusive, dramatized (Lockwood in Wuthering Heights; Marlow in Heart of Darkness, nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby
How is time handled in the story? Flashback (analeptic from analepsis or back-take), flash forward that anticipates an event which happens later (proleptic from prolepsis of fore-take)—Dickens has anticipating moment at beginning of A Tale of Two Cities when barrel of red wine spilt in street anticipates bloodshed caused much later by revolution.
How is the story “packaged”? frame narrative (primary narrative) with embedded narratives (secondary narrative) The Heart of Darkness again hasmain s tory embedded within the frame narrative of group of former deep-sea sailors telling ‘yarns’ as they wait for tide to turn. Or Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Frame narratives have sub-categories called single-ended, double-ended, intrusive. Heart of Darkness has double-ended because frame situation is re-introduced at end of embedded tale. When tale is over, we return briefly to group of listeners to whom Marlow, dramatized narrator, has been telling the tale of his experiences in Congo. Single-ended frame narratives never go back to opening structure—James’ The Turn of the Screw
What do narratologists do?
- look at individual narratives seeking out recurrent structures found within all narratives
- switch much of critical attention away from mere ‘content’ of tale, focusing on teller and process of telling
- take categories derived mainly from analysis of short narratives and expand and refine them so they are able to account for complexities of novel-length narratives
- counteract tendency of conventional criticism to foreground character and motive by foregrounding action and structure
- derive much of reading pleasure and interest from affinities between all narratives, rather than from uniqueness and originality of small number of highly-regarded examples
Lecture notes are gleaned from Peter Barry's Beginning Theory, Chapter 12.
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