Literary studies Narrative

What are the 2 different definitions of narrativ and give a short defintion of both.

What is a plot?

Name the 3 typical narrative situations (Stanzel)

Which narrative situation is defined?

• “narrating I” = ”experiencing I”

• seperated due to process of reflection or maturation

• only insight into feelings, thoughts of narrator or “narrating I”

Which narrative situation is defined?

• 1-Person or 3-Person narrator (external perspective dominates)/ Outside the world, character

• personal interjections, comments, moral judgement

• Adresses Reader, flashforward, metanarrative commentaries

• ominpresence/ omiscience

Which narrative situation is defined?

• Narrator recedes in background (3-Person narrator / not part of storyworld)

• narrated world from perspective of character = reflector

• stream of consciousness (inpression of having insight)

Which narrative situation can you spot?

[...] and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deep-down torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. James Joyce, end of Ulysses, 1922

Which narrative situation can you spot?

In that part of the western division of this kingdom, which is commonly called Somersetshire, there lately lived (and perhaps lives still) a gentleman whose name was Allworthy, and who might well be called the favourite of both Nature and Fortune; for both of these seem to have contended which should bless and enrich him most. [...] From the former of these, he derived an agreeable person, a sound constitution, a solid understanding, and a benevolent heart: by the latter, he was decreed to the inheritance of one of the largest estates in the country. [...] Reader, I think proper, before we proceed any farther together, to acquaint thee, that I intend to digress, through this whole history, as often as I see occasion: of which I am myself a better judge than any pitiful critic whatever. Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, 1749, book 1, chap. 2.

Which narrative situation can you spot?

She sat on the floor – that was her first impression of Sally – she sat on the floor with her arms round her knees, smoking a cigarette. Where could it have been? The Mannings'? The Kinloch-Jones's? At some party (where she could not be certain), for she had a distinct recollection of saying to the man she was with, 'Who is that?' And he had told her, and said that Sally's parents did not get on (how that shocked her – that one's parents should quarrel!). But all that evening she could not take her eyes off Sally. It was an extraordinary beauty of the kind she most admired, dark, large-eyed, with that quality which, since she hadn't got it herself, she always envied – a sort of abandonment, as if she could say anything, do anything; a quality much commoner in foreigners than in Englishwomen. Sally always said she had French blood in her veins, an ancestor had been with Marie Antoinette, had his head cut off, left a ruby ring. Perhaps that summer she came to stay at Bourton, walking in quite unexpectedly without a penny in her pocket, one night after dinner, and upsetting Aunt Helena to such an extent that she never forgave her. There had been some awful quarrel at home. She literally hadn't a penny that night when she came to them – had pawned a brooch to come down. She had rushed off in a passion. They sat up till all hours of the night talking. Sally it was who made her feel, for the first time, how sheltered the life at Bourton was. She knew nothing about sex – nothing about social problems. She had once seen an old man who had dropped dead in a field – she had seen cows just after their calves were born. But Aunt Helena never liked discussion of anything (when Sally gave her William Morris, it had to be wrapped in brown paper). There they sat, hour after hour, talking in her bedroom at the top of the house, talking about life, how they were to reform the world. They meant to found a society to abolish private property, and actually had a letter written, though not sent out. The ideas were Sally's, of course – but very soon she was just as excited – read Plato in bed before breakfast; read Morris; read Shelley by the hour. Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, 1925 (London: Granada, 1983), 30-31.

Genette`s structualist taxonomy

What is the difference between

Narration and Focalization

Genette`s structualist taxonomy

What is the difference between

Extradiegetic and Intradiegetic?

Genette`s structualist taxonomy

What is the difference between

Heterodiegetic and Homodiegetic and Autodiegetic

Genette`s structualist taxonomy

Focalization: Narrator=Character

Genette`s structualist taxonomy

Focalization: Narrator > Character

Genette`s structualist taxonomy

Focalization: Narrator < Character

What is the difference between a covert and overt narrator?

What are textual signals for unreliable narration?

Presentation of consciousness

Which three presentations exist?

The following definition describes which presentation of consciousness?

• High level of narrator participation

• narrators language

• summary

• person/tense shift

The following definition describes which presentation of consciousness?

• Medium degree of narrator participation

• characters language

• person/tense shift

The following definition describes which presentation of consciousness?

• Low degree of narrator participation

• characters language

• omission of verbs of thinking and feeling

The following definition describes which presentation of consciousness?

“ It took a few hours to make the child feel that if she was in neither of these places she was at least everywhere else”

The following definition describes which presentation of consciousness?

“He turned back. His scalp went icy and he shivered. What was he to do? Ridiculous to try driving away. And to leave the wood, with the rain still coming down full pelt, was out of question

The following definition describes which presentation of consciousness?

“ (…) and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the montain, yes when I put the rose in my hair like Andalusian girls used to or shall I wear a red dress and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and (…)”

Presentation of time: Order

What is a flashback and a flashforward?

Presentation of time: Duration

discourse time > story time

Presentation of time: Duration

discourse time < story time

Presentation of time: Duration

discourse time ∅ story time goes on

Presentation of time: Duration

discourse time goes on story time ∅

Presentation of time: Duration

discourse time = story time