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Relative Clauses

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WS 2011/12

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Relative Clauses

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narrative

[na-ra-tiv] telling of some true or ctitious event or connected sequence of events, recounted by a narrator to a narratee (although there may be more than one of each). Narratives are to be distinguished from descriptions (of qualities, states, or situations), and also from dramatic enactments of events (although a dramatic work may also include narrative speeches as well as descriptions). A narrative consists of a set of events (the story) recounted in a process of narration (or discourse), in which the events are selected and arranged in a particular order (the plot).

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Narratology (lat. narrare = erzhlen)

Narratology: Term applied to the formal analysis of narratives. Narratology rests upon certain basic distinctions between what is narrated (e.g. events, characters, and settings of a story) and how it is narrated (e.g. by what kind of narrator, in what order, at what time). Investigations into the narrated materials commonly seek the elementary units that are common to all narratives.

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Story (What) vs. Discourse (How)

What Russian Formalists Chatman E. M. Forster story fabula story plot

How sujet / sjuzhet discourse discourse

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E.M. Forster
Plot / Story

The king died and then the queen died, that is a story. The king died and then the queen died of grief, that is a plot (E.M. Forster)

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Narrative Level
Events

Events are the smallest units of plot, "which cannot be divided any further"(Lotman 1927: 330).

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Mimesis

Showing (mimesis): Mimesis [my-mees-is] is the opposite of diegesis. It refers to the attempt by an author to speak in a voice other than his / her own, specically a characters voice. In more recent critical discourse mimesis has become a code phrase for realism, or more precisely works of art that attempt to present reality in its most everyday sense. A literary work that is understood to be reproducing an external reality or any aspect of it is described as mimetic. The student looked intently on his examination sheet. His lips were pressed together and the palms of his hands left sweaty spots on his desk.

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Diegesis
Telling (diegesis) [dy-e-jee-sis] The opposite of mimesis, according to Plato. In diegesis the narrator speaks in his / her own voice, whereas in mimesis he / she does not (instead she / he trys to create the illusion that it is someone else who speaks). The Narrator is in overt control of the action presentation, characterization and point-of-view arrangement. I gaze down to get a rst look on the nal examination, the small, black print looks like a threat too me, written in a language I couldnt understand, it might have been written in hieroglyphs or Celtic runes as far as I am concerned. It certainly didnt help that my right eye started twitching repeatedly and the pen felt like a stone in my wet hands. Oh the heartbeat beats like a hammer on an anvil I feel like I am passing....

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Analysis of Time
Unity of Time/Place/Plot

Three aspects of time are used for the analysis of the story: duration, order, and frequency. These aspects are used to analyse the relation between story-time and discourse-time. Story-time is the length of time that passes in the story. Discourse-time covers the length of time that is taken up by the telling of the story.

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Duration
There are ve possible relations between story-time and discoursetime concerning the duration of a story: 1. Scene (real-time): story-time = discourse-time (as in a dialogue) 2. Summary: story-time > discourse-time ("He was born, lived for 99 years and died.") 3. Stretch: story-time < discourse-time ("While he jumped down the cli everything seemed so vivid: the dark blue of the sea, the white clouds. Suddenly memories of his childhood ashed through his mind...") 4. Elipsis: discourse-time skips part of the story time ("He returned ten years after joining the army as a bitter man.") 5. Pause: story-time pauses while discourse-time continues (usually in descriptions)
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Discourse Time summary scene ellipsis pause < = 0 1

Story Time

1 0

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Frequency

1. Singulative: An event takes place one single time and is referred to one single time. 2. Repetetive: An event takes place one single time but is referred to various times (e.g. from dierent perspectives) 3. Iterative: An event takes place various times but is referred to only once ("Day after day he looked at her, but she never ever noticed him.")

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Order of Events

1. Chronological Order: Assume A = He was born, B = He lived, C = He died. ABC = Chronological Structure CBA = Anachronological structure 3. Prolepsis Flash-forward 4. Analepsis Flash-back

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Characterization

"What is character but the determination of incident. What is incident but the determination of character."(Henry James)

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Focalization (Voice: Who sees?)

Zero-Focalisation No focalization, i.e. the other does not restrict himself to what one character knows ( narrator knows more than the character) External Focalization ( narrator-focalizer) narrative events presented from narrators perspective, ideal realisation would be total neutrality. Internal Focalization ( character focalizer) narrative events presented from a characters perspective.

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Focalizer = subject of the verbs of perception, thinking, feeling, remembering External focalization ( narrator-focalizer)
narrative events presented from narrators perspective

Internal focalization ( character focalizer, focal character, reector)


narrative events presented from a characters perspective

Fixed focalization Variable focalization Multiple focalization

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Implied Author

Wayne C. Booth prefers the term implied author over voice, in order better to indicate that the reader of a work of ction has the sense not only of the timbre and tone of a speaking voice, but of a total human presence. Booths view is that this implied author is an ideal, literary, created version of the real mean that is, the implied author, although related to the actual author, is nonetheless part of the total ction, whom the author gradually brings into being in the course of his composition, and who plays an important role in the overall eect of a work on a reader.

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Narrative Communication Situation (Chatman)

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Analytical categories applied to narrators (Nnning)

Categories for classication of narrator Communication level of speaker Presence on the level of the characters Degree of involvement in the narrated events Degree of explicitness Degree of (un)reliability Gender

Opposite ends of the spectrum extradiegetic heterodiegetic not involved covert (neutral) reliable female intradiegetic homodiegetic autodiegetic overt (explicit) unreliable male

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Franz Karl Stanzel: Typical Narrative Situations


First-person narrative situation Narrator referring to himself as I Narrator part of narrated action either as protagonist (I-asprotagonist) or witness (I-as-witness) First-Person narrator (narrating I or experiencing I narrative distance) Limited viewpoint Authorial narrative situation Narrator referring to himself as I Narrator outside of narrated action Figural narrative situation Narrative in 3rd Person. Narrator outside of narrated action perspective of one or several characters (reectors) Covert authorial narrator

Overt authorial narrator

Usually omniscience

Limited point(s)

view-

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Narrators and Narration

The Narrative Situation consists of two aspects: 1. Narrative Voice: Who speaks? Relation to the story: Is the narrator personally involved? Grard Genettes Structuralist Taxonomy (1980) 2. Focalization: Who sees?

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Homodiegetic narrator: Takes part in the events he narrates (= 1st person narrator (Stanzel)) Autodiegetic narrator: protagonist of his own narrative. ctional autobiography is an I-as-protagonist (Stanzel). Heterodiegetic narrator: Does not take part in the events he narrates. May have limited or unlimited insight into characters and events. Extradiegetic narrator: superior to the rst narrative and concerned with its narration level of narrative transmission. Intradiegetic narrator: level of the story (character who is part of the narrated story)

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"Jedes Ereignis, von dem in einer Erzhlung erzhlt wird, liegt auf der nchst hheren diegetischen Ebene zu der, auf der der hervorbringende narrative Akt dieser Erzhlung angesiedelt ist." Genette, Die Erzhlung, 148

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Four Basic Types of Narrators:

extradiegetic heterodiegetic : 1st -Level-Narrator, who tells a story she/he is not part of. (Homer) extradiegetic homodiegetic : 1st -Level-Narrator, who tells a story she/he is part of. (Robinson Crusoe) intradiegetic heterodiegetic : 2nd -Level-Narrator, who tells a story she/he is not part of. (Sheherazade in 1000 and one Nights) intradiegetic homodiegetic : 2nd -Level-Narrator, who tells a story she/he is part of (Marlow in Heart of Darkness)

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Unreliable Narration

Limited knowledge of the narrator Narrator is emotional involved in the events Narrator has questionable norms or values Signals for unreliable narration: e.g.
Explicit contradictions Contrasting versions of the same event Discrepancies between narrators statements and actions Frequent subjective comments Narrators insistence on his/her credibility

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Pster: Figure Conceptions

STATIC Monidimensional Personication Closed (Transpsychological)

Type

DYNAMIC Multidimensional Individual Open (Psychological)

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Representations of Speech, Thought and Consciousness


Degrees of mimetic illusion purely diegetic Types of speech representation

Examples When Charley got a little gin diegetic inside him he started telling war summary, yarns for the rst time in his life. psychonarration (The Big Money ) The waiter told him that Carranzas troops had lost Torren and that Villa and Zapata were indirect closing in on the Federal District. discourse (The 42nd Parallel ) free indirect What was he to do? Ridiculous to discourse try driving it away. (FID) (Hughes, The Rain Horse)
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purely mimetic

direct discourse free direct discourse, interior monologue

Mary said/thought: What on earth shall I do now? But what, he thinks, next? (Bradbury, Composition) Fainys head suddenly got very light. Bright boy, thats me, ambition and literary taste. ... (The 42nd Parallel)

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Free Indirect Discourse (FID)


Linguistic combination of two voices
Characters, not narrators, mind style / idiolect

Pronouns for the third person: I love her He loved her. Retains the back-shir of tenses characteristic of Indirect Discourse (ID): He said: I love her (DD). He said that he loved her (ID). He loved her (FID). Less formal syntax
Frequent use of exclamation marks and other markers of subjectivity Frequent use of ellipses1

Course Time Skips


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Interior Monologue / Quoted Monologue

Highly mimetic way of representing consciousness No discernible mediation Reference to character in rst person Tense: narrative present Syntactical conventions and punctuation Can represent the characters stream of consciousness

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Stream of Consciousness

Term originally coined by Henry James brother William (psychologist)


Disjointed character of mental processes

Adapted for literary criticism by May Sinlair (1918)


Textual depiction of mental processes Attempt to capture the randomness, irregularity, incoherence of these processes Mimetic way of representing characters minds

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Temporal relations between narration and story:

Ulterior narration after the events, Conrad, Heart of Darkness Anterior narration before the events, Shakespeare, Romeo & Julia Simultaneous narration during the events, Kelman How late it is Intercalated narration alternation of events and narration as seen in epistolary novels, Stoker Dracula

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Further Reading

A Guide to the Theory of Poetry

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