Narrative

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Narrative
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Story Plot (Handlungsstruktur)

• According to E.M. Forsters Aspects of the Novel
  (1927)
• story refers to the chronological sequence of
  events that the reader infers from the text
• plot refers to the casual and logical structure
  which connects events as presented in the text

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• event
• The crocodile eats breakfast.
• The king died.
• Once in a while he withdrew his glance from the
  newspaper and looked about him. (Kate Chopin,
  The Awakening, 23)
• description of characters/setting
• The house has blue shutters.
• He was a man of forty, of medium height and
  rather slender build he stooped a little.
• (Kate Chopin, The Awakening, 23)

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Story Discourse S. Chatman (1980) and
structuralists
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Story (Geschichte)
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Discourse (Erzählweise)
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Narrative Communication (Meyer, 58)
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Space/Setting

• time and place of narrated story
• contributes additional meaning by providing
  either correspondences or contrasts to the plot
  or the characters
• serves as location for characters
• provides scenery and atmosphere
• relates to characters
• relates to social, political, and cultural field
  
• creates mood or moral environment
• aesthetic meaning (symbolic function)

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Example Space/Setting

• The idiosyncrasy of the town is smoke. It rolls
  sullenly in slow folds from the great chimneys of
  the iron-foundries, and settles down in black,
  slimy pools on the muddy streets. Smoke on the
  wharves, smoke on the dingy boats, on the yellow
  river, -- clinging in a coating of greasy soot to
  the house-front, the two faded poplars, the faces
  of the passers-by. The long train of mules,
  dragging masses of pig iron through the narrow
  street, have a foul vapor hanging to their
  reeking sides Smoke everywhere! A dirty canary
  chirps desolately in a cage beside me. Its dream
  of green fields and sunshine is a very old dream,
  --almost worn out, I think.
• (Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills)

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Space/Setting

• fictional settings can never be one-to-one
  mirrors of real world
• they are only scaffolds that the reader with
  imagination transforms into pictures
• (various, different settings for different
  readers)

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Characters

• Characters are fictional representations of
  people constructed by the author to fulfill a
  certain function in a certain context.
• character construction is influenced by literary,
  historical, and cultural concepts and conventions
• text presents not a person but verbal skeletons
  of figures that the reader with imagination
  transforms into character/person
• (various, different characters for different
  readers)

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Techniques of Characterisation

• direct characterization (explicit)
• indirect characterization (implicit)
• narratorial characterisation (by narrator)
• figural characterisation (by a character)
• self-characterisation (by character himself)
• altero-characterisation (by somebody else)

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Characterisation

• telling names
• e.g.Squire Allworthy
• Lady Sneerwell
• Lady Bountiful
• Squire Sullen
• Mark Slackmeyer
• Barbara Boopstein
• Zonker Harris

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Example Direct / Indirect Characterisation

• Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, rich, with a
  comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to
  unite some of the best blessings of existence
  and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the
  world with very little to distress or vex her.
• (Jane Austen, Emma, ch.1)
• Madame Ratignolle laid her hand over that of
  Mrs. Pontellier, which was near her. Seeing that
  the hand was not withdrawn, she clasped it firmly
  and warmly. She even stroked it a little, fondly,
  with the other hand, murmuring in an undertone,
  Pauvre chérie. (Kate Chopin The Awakening, 38)

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Example Narratorial / Figural Characterisation

• He was a man of forty, of medium height and
  rather slender build he stooped a little.
• (Kate Chopin, The Awakening, 23)
• Later in Austens novel Emma, the reader
  witnesses a conversation between Emma and Mr.
  Knightley, in which he criticizes her rudeness to
  Miss Bates.

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Example Self-Characterisation

• I am indebted to my dear parents (both now in
  heaven) for having had habits of order and
  regularity instilled into me at a very early age.
  In that happy bygone time, I was taught to keep
  my hair tidy at all hours of the day and night,
  and to fold up every article of my clothing
  carefully, in the same order, on the same chair,
  in the same place at the foot of the bed, before
  retiring to rest. An entry of the days events in
  my little diary invariably preceeded the folding
  up. The Evening Hymn (repeated in bed)
  invariably followed the folding up. And the sweet
  sleep of childhood invariably followed the
  Evening Hymn.
• (Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone, Second Period,
  First narrative, ch. 1)

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Example Altero-Characterisation

• Miss Clack characterises Rachel, the lively and
  beautiful heroine of The Moonstone as
  insignificant-looking and with an absence of
  all lady-like restraint in her language and
  manner.
• (Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone, Second period,
  First narrative, ch.1)

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Character Functions

• major characters
• protagonist (e.g. Edna Pontellier)
• antagonist (e.g. Mr. Pontellier, Mr. Arobin)
• minor characters
• witness
• I-as-witness-narrator (e.g. Nick in Fitzgeralds
  The Great Gatsby)
• foil character (e.g. Watson in Sherlock Holmes
  stories)
• Confidant (Mademoiselle Reisz)

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Character Complexity

• E.M. Forster distinguished
• flat characters mono-dimensional, static, types,
  constructed around single idea/quality
• round characters multi-dimensional, dynamic
  (often develop), with depth, capable of surprise
  in convincing way,
• ? Terms are too reductive
• open vs. closed characters

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Time

• story-time (erzählte Zeit) is the sequence of
  events and the length of time that passes in the
  story
• discourse-time (Erzählzeit) covers the length of
  time that is taken up by the telling (or reading)
  of the story

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Time Duration

• relations between story and discourse time
• scene (szenische Darstellung) show events in the
  same time of their occurrence
• summary (Raffung) summarize events (telescope,
  zoom)
• stretch (Dehnung) show events for a longer time
  than their occurrence (slow motion)
• ellipsis (Auslassung) omit aspects of no
  importance
• pause (Pause) when description of events is
  interrupted by descriptions of setting/
  characters or memories/ interior monologues of
  characters

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Time Order

• chronological
• anachronological
• flashforward (prolepsis)
• flashback (analepsis)

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Time Frequency

• singulative an event takes place once and is
  referred to once
• repetitive an event takes place once but is
  referred to repeatedly
• iterative an event takes place several times but
  is referred to only once

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Time Beginnings Endings

• beginnings
• ab ovo
• in medias res
• in ultimas res
• endings
• open
• closed

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Example ab ovo

• My fathers family name being Pirrip, and my
  Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could
  make of both names nothing longer or more
  explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and
  came to be called Pip. I gave Pirrip as my
  fathers family name, on the authority of his
  tombstone and my sister Mrs Joe Gargery, who
  married the blacksmith. ... Ours was the marsh
  country, down by the river, within, as the river
  wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most
  vivid and broad impression of the identity of
  things, seems to me to have been gained on a
  memorable raw afternoon towards evening.
• (Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, ch. 1)

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Example in medias res

• I wonder when in the world youre going to do
  anything, Rudolf? said my brothers wife.
• My dear Rose, I answered, laying down my
  egg-spoon, why in the world should I do
  anything? My position is a comfortable one. I
  have an income nearly sufficient for my wants (no
  ones income is ever quite sufficient, you know),
  I enjoy an enviable social position I am brother
  to Lord Burlesdon, and brother-in-law to that
  charming lady, his countess. Behold, it is
  enough!
• You are nine-and twenty, she observed, and
  youve done nothing
• but
• (Anthony Hope, Prisoner of Zenda, ch.1)

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Closure / Open Ending

• closure
• if characters achieve their goals, resolve
  conflicts, or die
• if the good are rewarded and the bad are
  punished
• if characters reaches whatever state was
  suggested (or not) by the events in story
• open ending
• if all that is not suggested at the end
  unresolved conflicts, unachieved goals etc.

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Example closed ending

• Ever since that day there has been the old
  friendly sociability in Cranford society which I
  am thankful for, because my dear Miss Mattys
  love of peace and kindliness. We all love Miss
  Matty, and I somehow think we are all of us
  better when she is near us.
• (Elisabeth Gaskell,Cranford, end of ch. 16)

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Time Use of Tense

• narrative past
• Mrs. Pontellier evidently did not think so.
  After surveying the sketch critically she drew a
  broad smudge of paint across its surface, and
  crumpled the paper between her hands.
• (Kate Chopin, The Awakening, ch. 5)
• narrative present
• The magazine is open on Barbaras knee, but she
  does not look at it. She sits with her mouth
  open, her fur coat kept on, her face staring
  through the window. The train slides slowly down
  the platform at Watermouth. When it stops, she
  picks up her luggage and gets out.
• (Malcolm Bradbury, History Man, ch. 12)

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Time Use of Tense

• tense switch
• Wheres Jude? he asked, putting down New
  Archaeology with a sigh. Jude was the name of
  their small wirehaired terrier.
• Hes asleep in your study. But what do you
  think? Kathleen took the article from him, and
  eagerly looked at it. What do you think of the
  theory? She seemed to lose herself in these
  vistas of the remote past, as if somehow they
  could mitigate the life through which she moved
  every day. ...
• Another Time. In another time. She is a child, a
  crippled child. She is standing on the shore near
  Lyme, looking out to sea. Her parents are sitting
  in a beach-hut behind her, eating their
  sandwiches, and she turns around to make sure
  that they are still there. That they have not
  abandoned her. And then she looks back out to
  sea, the light from the waves playing upon her
  face. It is impossible to know what she is
  thinking. In fact she is thinking of nothing.
  Kathleen has merged with the sea.
• (Peter Ackroyd, First Light, end of ch. 7 and
  beginning of ch. 8)

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Time Use of Tense

• gnomic present
• When any two young people take it into their
  heads to marry, they are pretty sure by
  perseverance to carry their point, be they ever
  so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever so little
  likely to be necessary to each others ultimate
  comfort. This may be bad morality to conclude
  with, but I believe it to be truth and if such
  parties succeed, how should a Captain Wentworth
  and an Anne Elliot, with the advantage of
  maturity of mind, consciousness of right and one
  independent fortune between them, fail of bearing
  down every opposition? ...
• Sir Walter made no objection, and Elizabeth did
  nothing worse than look cold and unconcerned.
• (Jane Austen, Persuasion, ch. 24)

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Reference / Sources

• E. M. Forster. Aspects of the Novel. 1927 San
  Diego, New York, London A Harvest Book
  Harcourt, Inc.,1955.
• Seymor Chatman. Story and Discourse. Narrative
  Structure in Fiction and Film. Cornell UP, 1980.
• Michael Meyer. English and American Literatures.
  Tübingen and Basel A. Francke, 2004.