Introduction to the Study of Cultures and Literatures in English

- Introduction to the Study of Cultures and Literatures in English
- Előszó
- Contents
- Part 1 What is English Studies?
  - 1. What is a university? A proseminary
  - 2. Paradigms and paradigm shifts
  - 3. What is English Studies? English as a university subject
  - 4. Ideology, criticism, history
  - 5. Registers of Culture
  - 6. Canon formation and alternative reading practices
- Part 2 Fields of English Studies. Language, Literature, Culture, and Critical Approaches
  - 1. Preliminary problems: definitions, scientific expectations
  - 2. Ontological problems: the way literature exists
    - Semiotics
    - Literary communication
    - Language and Critical Thinking
    - The Language of the Sciences and the Language of Literature
  - 3. Methodological problems: the way we understand texts
    - Meaning and context
    - The Process of Interpretation
  - 4. The Theory of Genres
    - Genres and Their Historical Changes
    - Genre-generating Factors and Historical Changes
  - 5. Poetry and Figurative Language
    - Exercise in Interpretation / 1
      - I First level of meaning
      - II Second level of meaning
      - III Third level of meaning
      - IV Fourth level of meaning
  - 6. Narrative Fiction
    - Exercise in Interpretation / 2
      - I First level of meaning
      - II Second level of meaning
      - III Third level of meaning
  - 7. Drama
    - Exercise in Interpretation / 3
      - I First level of meaning
      - II Second level of meaning
  - Self test I
  - 8. Literature, Culture, and the Reading Subject: An Overview of Major Trends in Literary and Cultural Theory
    - I Preliminaries
    - II Formal critical trends: from the authorial intention to the close reading of the text (1st shift)
    - III Contextual aproaches: from text to context
    - The critique of structuralism
  - Self test II
  - 9. Critical Literature Consulted and Recommended
  - 10. Appendix

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# 6. Narrative Fiction

We are now turning to the second main kind of literature, narrative fiction. To understand narrative fiction, first of all we need to see what makes a text narrative.

## Task / groupwork

Study the two texts below, and observe the main differences between them.

„There was a young lady of Niger Who smiled as she rode on a tiger. They returned from the ride With the lady inside And the smile on the face of the tiger.” | „Roses are red Violets are blue Sugar is sweet And so are you.”

We can establish that the main difference between these texts is that the first contains a story, while the second just talks about a world, without any changes.

The first text is a narrative text: a narrative contains a story, there is at least one event in the story, and at least one change (movement from one state of affairs into another) makes an event.

The second text is a non-narrative (world-representing) text: it contains no story.

## Definition

Narrative fiction is the succession of events narrated in verbal medium. The events do not have to be real, they can be taking place in a possible world, but the elements of the narrative have to constitute a coherent whole.

A narrative has three levels or dimensions in which it is realized:

STORY | TEXT | NARRATION
events character | time characterization focalization (point of view) | levels and voices

THE STORY

The story is an abstraction from the represented world (the fictional reality) in the narrative. This is the essence of the narrative that can be paraphrased, it is transferable from medium to medium (the same story can be used in a drama, a novel, a film, a musical production, as in Othello: the drama by Shakespeare, the opera by Verdi and the film by Orson Welles). The story is a chronological succession of events (e.g., the life of Churchill as it happened from birth to death) which is shaped into a plot by the writer in the actual narrative (e.g., The Life of Churchill: a novel which might start with Churchill on his deathbed, and continue in the second chapter with his childhood, etc.).

The story includes characters which can be classified on the basis of:

COMPLEXITY | DEVELOPMENT | PENETRATION
round (complex) characters or flat (stock, one-sided) characters | developing or non-developing characters | we get an insight into the inner life of the characters

THE TEXT

On the level of the text, the story is realized as a plot, which is an actual succession of events, and this is done through several techniques.

1. Time techniques

It is always important to observe the difference between text time (the amount of time the reader needs to read the tex) and story time (the amount of time that elapses in the story while you read the text).

order:

analepsis: flashback, the plot jumps back in time

prolepsis: flashforward, the plot jumps forward in time

duration:

acceleration: the story time speeds up (ellipsis: maximum speed)

scene: the story duration is almost same as the text duration

deceleration: the story time is slowed down (descriptive pause: minimum speed, the story time halts)

Obviously, in the most important parts the text time is longer than the story time, because the events are narrated in great detail, while in less important parts less detail, less text time is devoted to a larger part of the story.

2. Characterization techniques

Textual character indicators:

a/ direct definition: the character trait of the person is named directly, e.g., by an adjective

b/ indirect presentation: this technique displays the character trait instead of naming it, and we find out about the features of the character through the action, speech, appearance, or the environment

3. Focalization techniques

Focalization is perhaps the most important, most characteristic and most complex technique in the narrative. The story is presented in the text through the mediation of some perspective, an angle of vision. Thus, focalization is the system of points of view in narrative fiction.

Types of focalization:

As far as the position of the perspective is concerned in relation to the story, focalization is either external focalization or internal focalization.

As far as the persistence of the perspective is concerned, focalization can be fixed, variable, or multiple.

Facets of focalization:

Perceptual facet: | *space: | external: | „bird's eye view”
|  | internal: | limited observer
| *time: | external: | panchronic
|  |  | retrospective
|  | internal: | synchronous
Psychological facet: | *cognitive component: |  |
|  | external: | unrestricted
|  | internal: | restricted knowledge
| *emotive component: |  |
|  | external: | objective (neutral)
|  | internal: | subjective (coloured)
Ideological facet: | *one dominant perspective (usually the narrator-focalizer's)
| *plurality of ideological positions
|  | without an authoritative one: polyphony

The polyphonic novel provides the reader with the greatest challenge, because we have to decide which ideological perspective we trust. In a polyphonic novel, the plot might be unfolding through the narration of several narrators, each having a different ideological position. Suppose we have a novel about the financial crisis in 2008, with different narrators appearing again and again: a banker, a shop assistant, an unemployed university professor, a prostitute, a corporate lawyer and a congressman. Which one are you going to believe?

## Review questions

1. What is the difference between story and plot?

2. What is the difference between a narrative and a non-narrative text?

3. Is the narrator always present as a character in a narrative?

4. What is the difference between a flat and a round character?

5. Find examples for a polyphonic novel in your readings!

6. Find examples for differences in text time and story time in your readings!

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