Narrative Structures: 200405, 2nd Semester

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Narrative Structures 2004-05, 2nd Semester

• Introductory

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Negotiation

• Work according to the basic framework, but the
  exact details to be worked out

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Topics to be Covered

• 1.               Definitions of Narrative
• 2.               Beginnings and Ends of Narrative
• 3.               Settings
• 4.               Characters
• 5.               Events
• 6.               Plot
• 7.               The Narrator
• 8.               The Schema
• 9.               Genre
• 10.           Narrative Production
• 11.           Cinematic Narrative
• 12.           Symbol and Allegory
• 13.           Narrative and Morality

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Nature of assignments

• Class Presentation
• Project work
• Percentage of marks for continuous assessment 50

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1st Lecture

• Definitions of Narrative

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Problems with definitions

• Circularity
• Seymour Chatman defines narrative as a structure
  which is made up of narrative statements.
• Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan defines narrative fiction
  as the narration of a succession of fictional
  events.
• Mieke Bal defines (p. 3) narrative as a corpus
  which should consist of all narrative texts and
  only those texts which are narrative' (my
  emphasis).

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The dualistic nature of narrative

• The what the way
• Histoire discours

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The dualistic nature of narrative

• The what the way
• Histoire discours

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Three-level descriptions of narrative

• Bal
•    The fabula is a series of logically and
  chronologically related events, caused or
  experienced by actors. Bal calls this the deep or
  abstract structure of the text.
•    The story is the way the fabula is looked at,
  and consists of the aspectsor traits peculiar
  to a given story. We must note here that Bal's
  definition of story is quite different from that
  given above, and also from the definitions given
  by Chatman and Rimmon-Kenan.
•    Finally, there is the text, by which one uses
  language signs to relate a story, which is
  produced by an agent who relates the story.

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Three-level descriptions of narrative

• Rimmon-Kenan
•  The story is equivalent to the histoire and
  fabula mentioned earlier the story to her is an
  abstraction of text events.
•  Text, to Rimmon-Kenan is equivalent to
  discours, and consists of what we read or hear.
  The text is spoken or written discourse as it is
  told the events of a text need not be arranged
  in chronological order.
•  Narration is the process of production, and
  involves an agent who produces the text.

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Taking a minimalist view

• A Minimalist Definition of Narrative
• Two states and a transition or movement between
  the two states.

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Paradigmatic and syntagmatic features
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Narrative as communication

• To Chatman (28), a narrative is a
  communication hence, it presupposes two parties,
  a sender and a receiver.
• To Rimmon-Kenan, narration suggests a
  communication process in which the narrative as
  message is transmitted by addressor to addressee
  (p. 2).
• It has been claimed (for example by Martin 1986
  27), that the recent trend in narrative analysis
  represents a shift from the linguistic to the
  communication model.

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Narrative As Communication
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Narrative and Sociology

• A narrative can be sociologically defined
• it can be analysed in terms of any or all of the
  features or factors mentioned earlier.
• However, these features or factors must be of
  sociological consequence, reflect social
  patterns, or are activated by social factors.

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Narrative and Cognition

• An important concept in the cognitive approach to
  narrative is the schema
• We will be devoting a short lecture to this topic

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Narrative and Literature

• Important approach
• Perhaps the study of literature is the discipline
  which has looked at narrative most of all

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The Human Elements in Narrative

• We can say here that narrative must have a human
  (or human-like) agent who must do something, or
  something must be done to him or her.

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Causality

• Causality or more appropriately perhaps, the
  perception of causality is important in
  narrative.
• Causality will be discussed further in the
  lecture on events,
• We will ask, for example, whether it could be
  clearly distinguished from temporal succession

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Movement Verbs

• Verbs of movement are more essential to narrative
  than verbs which describe states.

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Movement Material Processes

• Verbs which describe physical movement are
  described in the linguistics of M. A. K.
  Halliday, as material processes, and these verbs
  are therefore more cardinal to narrative than the
  other categories of verbs.

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Movement Dynamic Verbs

• At a more informal level, we can view what are
  sometimes called dynamic verbs (i.e. verbs which
  describe physical activity) as being essential to
  narrative.

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The Story Teller, Author and Narrator

• Which of these are necessary?
• These concepts will be discussed very briefly in
  this lecture, but will be discussed more fully in
  the 7th lecture, on the concept of the narrator

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Does the Author Exist?

• We should ask here whether we should bring the
  author into the picture in our definition of
  narrative, as s/he is, at best, an unseen
  presence, especially when one refers to written
  narrative.
• The I of narrative, for example, may not (and
  frequently does not) refer to the author, but to
  the narrator.
• The existence of the author is a major problem in
  cinematic narratives

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Problems With the Narrator

• In spite of its importance, there are problems
  with the existence of the narrator in some genres
  of narrative, such as those found in film and
  drama.

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Is an Audience Necessary?

• There have been many attempts to explain the
  necessity of an audience to narrative.

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Narrative and Culture

• A difficulty one faces in the analysis of
  narrative, and in the attempt to define it, lies
  in the fact that the shapes of narrative are
  based on general cultural assumptions, which may
  be different from society to society.

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The Nature of Definitions

• Definitions can either be internal
• in which case one talks of the constituents of
  narrative
• Or it can be external
• where one views the various contexts that these
  constituents should be viewed from.

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THE COCK AND THE PEARL
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THE FOX AND THE MASK
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2nd Lecture

• Beginnings and Ends

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Defining beginning and end

• Beginnings and ends of narrative are often
  treated as Aristotelian conceptions, but they may
  come from life itself they are seen, for
  example, in birth and death.

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The beginning is not always the beginning

• This disjunction between the two conceptions of
  the beginning of narrative arises because of the
  two-fold division of narrative into story and
  discourse, which we have pointed out earlier.

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The discoursal beginning

• The placement of a final event or a series of
  events of a story at the discoursal beginning of
  a narrative quite obviously serves a strategic
  purpose.
• The discoursal beginning of a narrative delimits
  the possibilities of the narrative,

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Discoursal beginnings narrative in
conversational interaction

• A question which can be asked in relation to
  narrative in conversational interaction is why
  narrative in such a situation should begin at
  all. We may want to note here that the beginning
  of a conversational narrative may be triggered by
  an event external to the story itself.

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Discoursal beginnings narrative in
conversational interaction

• Reference
• Wolfson, Nessa.
• CHP, the conversational historical present in
  American English narrative
• Dordrecht, Holland Cinnaminson, U.S.A. Foris
  Publications, 1982.

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Discoursal beginnings narrative in
conversational interaction
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Setting and beginning

• Should the setting be included at the beginning?
• Further discussion of setting in the next lecture

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The exposition
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The Exposition Part of the Plot

• The exposition is treated as a plot constituent,
  and is regarded as such by Longacre

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Planning the narrative

• The planning stage of a narrative initially
  occurs before the beginning proper, but the
  teller/writer may plan and re-plan the narrative
  during the course of producing the narrative.
• We will be dealing more with the planning stages
  in the lecture on narrative production

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The end sad or happy?

• Beginnings and ends in narrative are actually
  more determinate than related ideas in life.
• Chatman has said No end, in reality, is ever
  final in the way The End of a novel or film is
  (p. 47).
• Are sad or happy endings important considerations?

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Novel as literary genre no end in sight?

• One common complaint about the novel as a
  literary genre is that they tend to ramble, and
  have no proper ending.
• Can the same be said about the television series?

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External factors initiating the end

• External factors that initiate the end may not be
  linguistic
• the ending is the end of the discourse, but not
  of the story.
• the ending may not be intrinsic to the narrative
  itself.
• Narrative in psychotherapy, for example, may
  occur
• when the patient begins to tell the analyst a
  story,
• and may end when the analyst believes that he has
  arrived at a diagnosis of the patient, and not
  because the story has been concluded
  satisfactorily.

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No end without the whole

• One major problem with any discussion of the end,
  is that one cannot really discuss it until other
  components of narrative are discussed, unless of
  course one is dealing with external factors which
  trigger the end.

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End of Session