Genette’s narrative types

Genette’s two basic types of narratives are:

1. Homodiegetic narrative.

In a homodiegetic narrative the story is fold by a (homodiegetic) narrator who is presented as a character in the story (a text is homodiegetic if among its story-related-action sentences there are some that contain first-person pronouns (I did this. I saw this. etc), indicating that the narrator was at least a witness to the events depicted).

Heterodiegetic narrative

In a heterodiegetic narrative the story is fold by a (heterodiegetic) narrator who is not present as a character in the story (a text is heterodiegetic if all of its story-related-action sentences are third-person sentences (She did it, this was what happened to him, etc.)).

Lanser’s rule

In the absence of any text-internal clues as to the narrator’s sex, use the pronoun appropriate to the author’s sex; i.e. assume that the narrator is male if the author is male, and that the narrator is female if the author is female respectively.

 

7.  ‘Voice Markers’ that project a narrative voice. Stanzel’s (proto-)typical narrative situation. Main aspects of first-person narration. Basic features of authorial narrative

“Voice markers” that project a narrative voice

1. Content matter – appropriate voices for sad and happy, comic and tragic subjects (though precise type of intonation never follows automatically);

2. Subjective expressions – expressions (or “expressivity markers”) that indicate the narrators’ education, his/her beliefs, convictions, interests, values, political and ideological orientation, attitude towards people, events and things.

3. Pragmatic signals – expressions that signal the narrator’s awareness of an audience and the degree of his/her orientation towards it.

Stanzel’s (proto-)typical narrative situations

1. A first-person narrative is told by a narrator who is present as a character in his/her story; it is a story of events she/he has experienced him/herself, a story of personal experience,

The individual who acts as a narrator (narrating I) is also a character (experiencing I) on the level of action.

2. An authorial narrative (heterodiegetic overt) is fold by a narrator who is absent from the story, i.e. does not appear as a character in the story. The authorial narrator tells a story involving other people. An authorial narrator sees the story from an outsider’s position, iften a position of absolute authority that allows her/him to know everything about the story’s world and its characters.

3. A figural narrative (heterodiegetic covert plus internal focalization) – the specific configuration of a heterodiegetic covert narrative which backgrounds the narrator and foregrounds internal focalization.

The technique of presenting something from the point of view of a story by an internal character is called internal focalization.

The character through whose eyes the action is presented is called an internal focalizer.

Figural narrative is a narrative which presents the story events as seen through the eyes of a third-person internal focalizer.

The narrator of a figural narrative is a covert heterodiegetic narrator hiding behind the presentation of the internal focalizer’s consciousness, especially his/her perceptions and thoughts.

Because the narrator’s discourse closely mimics the focalizer’s voice its own vocal quality is largely indistinct. One of the main effects of internal focalization is to attract attention to the mind of the reflector-character and away from the narrator and the processes of narratorial mediation.

The full extent of figural techniques was first explored in the novels and short stories of 20^th century authors such as Henry James, Franz Kafka, Dorothy Richardson, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and many others.

 

Scene and summary as narrative modes. Description and commentary as narrative modes

Narrative Modes

- Showing. In a showing mode of presentation, there is little or no narratorial mediation, overtness (очевидность) or presence. The reader is basically cast in the role of a witness to the events.

- Telling. In a telling mode of presentation, the narrator is in overt control (especially durational control) of action presentation, characterization and point-of-view arrangement.

- Scene/scenic presentation. A showing mode which presents a continuous stream of detailed action events. Durational aspect: isochrony (story time and discourse time are mapping (отображать)).

- Summary. A telling mode in which the narrator condenses a sequence of action events into a thematically focused and orderly account. Durational aspect: speed-up.

Supportive Narrative Modes

- Description. A telling mode in which the narrator introduces a character or describes the setting. Durational aspect: pause.

- Comment/commentary. A telling mode in which the narrator comments on characters, the development of the action, the circumstances of the act of narrating, etc. Durational aspect: pause.

 

Semantics, semasiology, onomasiology, their links to stylistics