Chapter 12: Narratology

By King Meera -
9-10 on 26 Nov, 2015

Narratology:
  • draws from structuralism
  • 1. nothing can be considered in isolation
  • 2. every narrative is made up of units, combined using rules
  • study of narratives - structure, why, mechanisms, procedures, how it makes meaning for you
  • nature of story
  • cultural practice
  • difference between plot and story
Narrative:
  • the way in which you describe something, a recounting of events
  • Bordwell: Narrative is a series of events bound by a cause-and-effect relationship, or a causal link
Narrator: 
  • anonymous, 1st person, 3rd person, "objective", subjective
  • whoever does the recounting
Narratee:
  • to whom the recounting is done
Aristotle:
  • first person to give clear picture of narratology
  • according to him, tragedy was superior to other epic forms because of spectacle (out of plot-character-thought-diction-song-spectacle) and because they're self-contained
  • plot is the heart and soul of tragedy:
  1. hamartia (tragic flaw - jealousy, pride, indecision)
  2. anagnorisis (recognition of truth of situation - ignorance to awareness, epiphanic moment)
  3. peripetia (pehrepee-sha) (reversal of fortune, for better or for worse)

10-11 on 30 Nov 2015

peripetia may occur multiple times - and it may be a reversal of fortune from good to bad AND vice-versa (not plot twist coz plot twist only happens after climax, usu. in the end, and is not specific to a character.
note that peripetia, anagnorisis and hamartia (in narratology) only apply to tragedies
(recall that spectacle and catharsis set tragedies apart from other epics)

Vladimir Propp
formalist man's work rediscovered in '50s coz of similarity
Morphology of Folktales: he analysed (and compared) 100 tales
found 31 common functions - writer borrows from these and arranges them to form a tale
formula, elements mentioned - dunno why)
uniformity underlies multiformity
can never break sequence of functions/elements in a folktale.
31 funtions clubbed under 7 spheres (dependant on roles) of action:
villain, donor, helper, princess and her father, dispatcher, hero, false hero
(note: roles, not characters: character is subordinate to action, character emerges through action, and one character may play many roles and vice versa)
flaw: POV not included, nor is manner of narrative presentation

Realist fiction:
Henry James, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens:
reversed subordination of character to action: Oliver is greater than his actions of pickpocketing

10-11 on 1 December 2015

Gerard Genette theorized about how a tale is told, i.e. its narration, in his book Narrative Discourse (1972). Considering it is a work of the 70's, there is a significant structuralist impact.

Genette identified six aspects of narration:
passage of time
focalization
narrator
time in the story
presentation of story
speech and thought

*1*
Passage of time is communicated through mimesis or diegesis, types of narration involving imitation (showing) or recounting (telling).
- Mimesis involves dramatizing, showtelling, staging and portrayal of reactions, and creates the illusion of seeing and hearing things ourselves. Mimesis creates "word pictures".
- Diegesis involves relating and summarizing, where the narrator tells and not shows what happens. Diegesis creates a narrative world.
- Mimesis is for full visualization, suspense and is longer. Diegesis is shorter, "in a nutshell".

*2*
Narrative focalization is the POV or perspective that comes across. It may be internal, as in the Princess Diaries, or external, as in Harry Potter. For external focalization, viewpoint is outside the character, so the readers see what the characters say and do. Internal focalization is a portrayal of emotions in dramatic monologue. We see what the characters think and feel.

<note>
// when mimesis and diegesis are blended, the story becomes plausible:
100% mimesis: "you trippin' bro"
100% diegesis: "bullshit. you're bluffing"
// focalizer is the person whose POV comes across very clearly.
zero focalization (also called omniscient narration) is when there is no one eminent POV

*3*
Narrators
Textbook - pg 225
Where the narrator is not a character in the story, is never introduced but speaks in first person - authorial persona - is representative of author's ideology, is indistinct, often with no gender identity.
Where the narrators are given a character in the story
Where the narrators are known to us as distinct individuals with character but are not part of the story

Heterodiegetic (not a character in the story)
Homodiegetic (is a character in the story)

*4*
Time in the story
Not always linear
Flashback method is known as analeptic narration
Flash-forward is proleptic
The two types are mixed to make the story engaging and to communicate themes

*5*
Presentation of story
Framed (also called primary (simply because it comes first)) narrative is the greater narrative as in the Canterbury Tales where the the story of the pilgrimage frames the
Embedded narratives (meta narratives)of each of the pilgrims
(incidents and anecdotes mentioned don't count as embedded narrative unless they are central to the larger narrative and alter its course or lend significant meaning to it)
The framing may occur in three ways:
1: Single ended (F->E.) begins with the framed narrative and ends with the conclusion of the embedded narrative.
2: Double ended (F->E.->F.) begins with the framed narrative, continues beyond the completion of the embedded narrative and ends with the conclusion of the framed narrative
3: intrusive engagement (F->*E*->F->^E^->F and so on) follows multiple distinct embedded narratives as in GoT. This serves as an alienation device since the framed narrative is frequently interrupted and you can't stick to one story so you can't relate well.

*6*
Speech and Thought
Tagging moves the narration from showing to telling mode (mimetic to diegetic)
⦁ direct and selectively tagged (Mimetic - exactly what happened; reproducing)
⦁ tagged indirect speech (Transposed - reported speech; we know both characters (speaker and listener))
⦁ free indirect speech (Narratized - same ide expressed differently without changing meaning

<^> <^> <^>
FOCUS:Aristotle - themes, Propp - plot, Genette - narration, Barthes - reader

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