11 Literary Narrative Fiction

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11 Literary Narrative Fiction

• Genres of Narrative Fiction
• History of the Form

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Recap Narratives

• Personal, political, historical, legal,
  medical narratives narratives power to capture
  certain truths and experiences in special ways
• - unlike other modes of explanation and
  analysis such as statistics, descriptions,
  summaries, or reasoning via conceptual
  abstractions

3
The spectrum of fiction

• fact fiction truth?
• History Realism Romance Fantasy
• Realism vs romance a matter of perception
• vs a matter of vision
• 2 principal ways fiction can be related to life

Realism Romance
4
Literary narrative fiction

• literature art of language
• kinds of Iiterature poetry,
• drama,
• narrative fiction
• prose from Latin prosa or proversa oratio
• straightforward discourse
• M. Jourdain I've been speaking in PROSE all
  along!
• Moliere (1622-1673), Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme

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Literary conventions

• an agreement between artist and audience as to
• the significance of features appearing in
  a work of art
• knowledge of conventions literary competence
• narrative tells of real or imagined events
• tells a story
• fiction an imagined creation in
  verse/prose/drama
• story (imagined) events or happenings,
• involving a conflict
• plot arrangement of action ? structure

6
Literary, narrative, fictional

• distinct features, do not presuppose each other
• Where do we place lyric poetry?
• Marie-Laure Ryan, Possible Worlds,
  Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative
  Theory.Bloomington, Indiana Indiana UP, 1991

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Literary, narrative, fictional
examples literary narrative fictional
Lit. narr. fict.
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- - - Nonlit. nonnarr. nonfiction

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Testing

• What can you notice about the following excerpts?
  (Can you guess the period, the author, the work?)
• How is the weather defining the beginning of the
  book in Chapter 1?
• What do we find out about the narrator from the
  way Mrs Fairfax is introduced in Ch 12?
• How is the introduction of the people in Moor
  house different in Ch 30?
• Do you notice anything special about the way the
  last chapter, Ch 38 begins?

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Chapter 1

• There was no possibility of taking a walk
  that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the
  leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning but
  since dinner (Mrs Reed, when there was no
  company, dined early), the cold winter wind had
  brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so
  penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was
  now out of the question.
• (Penguin Classics edition, p 39)

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Chapter 12

• The promise of a smooth career, which my first
  calm introduction to Thornfield Hall seemed to
  pledge, was not belied on a longer acquaintance
  with the place and its inmates. Mrs. Fairfax
  turned out to be what she appeared, a
  placid-tempered, kind-natured woman, of competent
  education and average intelligence. My pupil was
  a lovely child who had been spoilt and indulged
  (140)

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Chapter 30

• The more I knew of the inmates of Moor House,
  the better I liked them. In a few days I have so
  far recovered my health that I could sit up all
  day, and walk out sometimes. I could join with
  Diana and Mary in all their occupations, converse
  with them as much as they wished, and aid them
  when and where they would allow me. There was a
  reviving pleasure in this intercourse, of a kind
  now tasted by me for the first time the
  pleasure arising from perfect congeniality of
  tastes, sentiments, and principles. (376)

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Chapter 38

• Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had
  he and I, the parson and clerk, were alone
  present. When we got back from church, I went
  into the kitchen of the manor house, where Mary
  was cooking the dinner, and John cleaning the
  knives, and I said
• Mary, I have been married to Mr Rochester this
  morning. (474)

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The history of fiction

• Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel Studies in
  Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (1957)
• Dale Spender, Mothers of the Novel (1988)
• Margaret Anne Doody, The True Story of the Novel
  (1996)

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NovelIn J. A. Cuddon Dictionary of Literary
Terms and Literary Theory. London Penguin, 1999

• Derived from Italian novella, 'tale, piece of
  news
• applied to a wide variety of writings
• only common attribute is that they are extended
  pieces of prose fiction
• The length of novels varies greatly
• (when is a novel not a novel but a long
  short-story or a short novel or a novella?)
• Fewer and fewer rules
• in contemporary practice a novel is between
  60-70.000 words and 200.000.

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CuddonNovel (the term)

• Meanings and implications of the term at
  different stages
• 15th to t18th cc. its meaning tended to derive
  from the Italian novella and the Spanish novela
  (the French term nouvelle is closely related).
  The term (often used in a plural sense) denoted
  short stories or tales of the kind one finds in
  Boccaccio's Decameron (c. 1349 - 51).
• Nowadays we would classify all the contents of
  these as short stories.

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CuddonNovel /novelty

• Meaning of the term a prose narrative about
  characters and their actions in what was
  recognizably everyday life, usually in the
  present, with the emphasis on things being 'new'
  or a 'novelty'.
• It was used in contradistinction to 'romance'.
• In the 19th c. the concept of 'novel' was
  enlarged.

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CuddonNovel (as a form)

• The form - susceptible to change and
• development
• Pliable and adaptable to a seemingly endless
• variety of topic and themes
• A wide range of sub-species or categories.

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CuddonNovel (subject matter)

• The subject matter of the novel eludes
  classification. A number of these classifications
  shade off into each other.
• For example psychological novel is a term which
  embraces many books proletarian, propaganda and
  thesis novels tend to have much in common the
  picaresque narrative is often a novel of
  adventure a saga novel may also be a regional
  novel.

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CuddonNovel (origins)

• The origins of the genre are obscure
• but in the time of the XIIth Dynasty Middle
• Kingdom (c. 1200 BC) Egyptians were writing
• fiction of a kind which one would describe as a
• novel today

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CuddonNovel (early)

• From Classical times
• Daphnis and Chloe (2nd c. BC) by Longus
• The Golden Ass (2nd c. AD) by Apuleius
• Satyricon (1st c. AD) of Petronius Arbiter
• Most of these are concerned with love and contain
  the rudiments of novels as we understand them
  today

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CuddonNovel (Oriental)

• Oriental prose fiction
• Arabian Nights Entertainments, or The Thousand
  and One Nights, 10th c. the collection, collected
  and established as a group of stories probably by
  an Egyptian professional story-teller at some
  time between the 14th and 16th c.
• Became known in Europe early in the 18th c.,
  since when they have had a considerable influence.

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CuddonNovel (forerunners of)

• Collections of novella or short tales, integrated
• Italy Giovanni Boccaccios Decameron
  (134952, revised 13701371) influence on
  Geoffrey Chaucers The Canterbury Tales (late
  14th c.)
• Matteo Bandellos Le Novelle
• (written between 1510 1560)
• France Marguerite of Navarre Heptaméron
• (published in 1558)
• written in prose form
• method of narration
• creation and development of character

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CuddonNovel (from verse to prose)

• Until 14th c. literature of entertainment mostly
  confined to narrative verse, particularly the
  epic and the romance.
• Romance ? the word roman, which is the term
• for novel in most European languages.
• Novel ? in some ways a descendant of the
  medieval romances, which, in the first place,
  like the epic, were written in verse and then in
  prose (e.g. Malory's Morte D'Arthur, 1485)
• prose narratives by the end of the 17th c.

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CuddonNovel (Spain, France)

• Spain ahead of the rest of Europe in the
  development of the novel form.
• Cervantes's Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605,
  1615) satirized chivalry and a number of the
  earlier novels
• France Rabelais's Gargantua (1534) and Pantagruel
  (1532) can be classed as novels of phantasy
• (later examples may be loosely described as
  science fiction)

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CuddonNovel (England)

• England, end of the 15th c., extended prose
  narrative John Lyly's Euphues (in two parts,
  1578 and 1580
• Sir Philip Sidney's pastoral romance Arcadia
  (1590).
• 1719 Daniel Defoe published his story of
  adventure Robinson Crusoe (tradition of desert
  island fiction)
• Defoe, Moll Flanders (1722), a sociological
  novel,
• A Journal of the Plague Year (1722),
  historical
• 
  fiction

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Sub-genres

• Integrated short stories
• Arabian Nights' Entertainments, or The Thousand
  and One Nights,
• Boccaccio, Decameron
• James Joyce, Dubliners

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Sub-genres

• Romance
• any sort of story of chivalry or of love
• Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605-1615)
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (14th c.)
• Thomas Malory, Le Morte DArthur (15th c.)

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Sub-genres

• Pastoral romance
• Longus, Daphnis and Chloe (2nd c. A.D.)
• Philip Sidney, Arcadia (1590)
• Anti-pastoral
• Thomas Hardy, Tess of the DUrbervilles (1891),
  Jude the Obscure (1895)

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Sub-genres

• Picaresque novel (Sp pícaro, rogue)
• tells the life of a knave or a picaroon who is
  the servant of several masters
• Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders (1722)
• Henry Fielding, Jonathan Wild (1743)

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Sub-genres

• Novel of adventure / desert island novel
• related to the picaresque novel and the romance
• Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719)
• R.L. Stevenson, Treasure Island (1883)
• Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer (1876)
• Huckleberry Finn (1885)
• James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans
  (1826)

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Sub-genres

• Gothic novel
• a type of romance, popular from the 1760s until
  the 1820s, has terror and cruelty as main themes,
  impact on the ghost story and the horror story
• Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764
• Ann Radcliffe, Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)

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Sub-genres

• Gothic novel (continued)
• Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (1818)
• Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861)
• R. L. Stevenson, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
• (Doppelgänger, the Other within/projected)
• (later horror films, thrillers)

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Sub-genres

• Epistolary novel
• in the form of letters, popular in the 18th c.
• Samuel Richardson, Pamela (1740) and
• Clarissa Harlowe (1747, 1748)
• Tobias Smollett, Humphrey Clinker (1771)

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Sub-genres

• Sentimental novel / novel of sentimentality
• popular in the 18th c., distresses of the
  virtuous
• Samuel Richardson, Pamela (1740)
• Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield (1766)
• Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)

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Sub-genres

• Historical novel
• a form of fictional narrative which reconstructs
  history imaginatively
• Walter Scott, Waverly (1814)
• William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
  (1847-48)
• Robert Graves, I, Claudius (1934)
• William Golding, Rites of Passage (1980)

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Sub-genres

• Documentary novel
• based on documentary evidence in the shape of
  newspaper article, etc.
• Truman Capote, In Cold Blood (1966)
• Graham Greene, The Quiet American (1955)

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Sub-genres

• Key novel
• actual persons are presented under fictitious
  names
• Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point (1928) (D. H.
  Lawrence)

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Sub-genres

• Thesis / sociological / propaganda novel
• treats of a social, political, religious problem
• Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Toms Cabin (1852)
• The Condition of England novel /regional novel
• Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854)
• Charlotte Brontë, Shirley (1849)
• Mrs Gaskell, North and South (1855)

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Sub-genres

• Utopia
• gr. Ou topos no place adn eutopia place
  where all is well
• Thomas More, Utopia (1516)
• George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
• Jonathan Swift, Gullivers Travels (1726, 1735)
• William Golding, Lord of the Flies (1954)
• Anti-utopia, dystopia Science fiction
• Phantasy or Fantasy

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Sub-genres

• Campus novel
• has a university campus as setting
• Mary McCarthy, The Groves of Academe (1952)
• Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim (1954)
• David Lodge, Changing Places (1975)

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Sub-genres

• The saga / chronicle novel
• narrative about the life of a large family
• John Galsworthy, Forsyte Saga (1906-1921)

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Sub-genres

• Time novel
• employs stream of consciousness technique, time
  is used as a theme
• James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)
• Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu
  (1913-1927)

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Sub-genres

• Psychological novel
• concerned with emotional, mental lives of the
  characters
• Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925)