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NARRATOLOGY IN BRIEF

Narratology may be defined as the theory of narrative. It provides a “grammar” of narrative, useful in approaching
any text in prose, as the one intended for analysis in the present course (The Firebird’s Nest, by Salman Rushdie). A
narratological enterprise presupposes a decoding of the inner mechanisms of a literary text which, besides its
obvious content of ideas, implies a structural core or an architectural design – open for interpretation, but
simultaneously providing the ground for a more or less objective discussion on the intentional scaffolding of the
discourse.
From the numerous models advanced by theoreticians along the years (Tzvetan Todorov, Vladimir Propp,
Roland Barthes, Percy Lubbock, Jonathan Culler, Michael Toolan, Mieke Bal and others), the one chosen here for
its clear, methodologically-oriented content, appropriate for workshop practice in a classroom situation, is that of
Gérard Genette (b. 1930).

THE GÉRARD GENETTE MODEL


In his Narrative Discourse (1972), Genette defines narrative as:
 a narrative statement, the oral or written discourse that undertakes to tell of an event or a series of events
 the succession of events, real or fictitious, that are the subjects of this discourse, and their several relations of
linking, opposition, repetition etc (trans. 1980: 25)
As for the analysis of narrative discourse, he mentions the fact that it presupposes the study of the
relationships between:
 narrative and story,
 narrative and narrating
 story and narrating (29)
His “grammar” of narrative is structured around the notions of tense, mood (operative at the level of
connections between story and narrative) and voice (designating connections between both narrating and narrative,
and narrating and story).
Genette’s categories might be summed up as follows:

1. TENSE (temporal relations)


 order (connections between the temporal order of succession of events in the story and the pseudo-temporal
order of their arrangement in the narrative)
- prolepsis – any narrative manoeuvre that consists of narrating or evoking in advance an event that will take
place later
- analepsis – any evocation after the fact of an event that took place earlier than the point in the story where
we are at any given moment
- syllepsis – temporal parallelism or telling of different moments simultaneously
- anachrony – all forms of discordance between the temporal orders of story and narrative (40)
 duration (connections between the variable duration of the events and the pseudo-duration of their telling /
length of the text —> speed)
- descriptive pause (where the story time is 0 and the narrating time is considerable)
- scene (usually in dialogue, where there is equality of time between narrative and story)
- summary (where the narrating time is smaller than the story time)
- ellipsis (where the narrating time is 0 and the story time is considerable) (95)
 frequency (relations between the repetitive capacities of the story and those of the narrative)
- singulative narrative (narrating once what happened once)
- repeating narrative (narrating more/many times what happened once)
- iterative narrative (narrating at one time what happened more/many times) (114-116)

2. MOOD (modalities of representation)


 distance – mimesis/diegesis —> showing/telling —>
- narrative of events (narrative transcription of the non-verbal into the verbal)
- narrative of words
- narratised or narrated speech: of inner thoughts (the most distant)
- transposed speech into indirect style (different from free indirect style)
- reported speech (the least distant)
 perspective (focalization)
- non-focalized narration (with zero focalization)
- internal focalization (fixed, variable or multiple)
- external focalization (191-194)
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3. VOICE (narrators and narrating)
 time of the narrating
 subsequent – for narration in the past tense
 prior – for narration in the future tense
 simultaneous – for narration in the present of the action
 interpolated – for narration between the moments of the action
 narrative levels (conferring in-depth to the narrative)
- extradiegetic (outside the story)
- diegetic/intradiegetic (inside the storyline proper)
- metadiegetic
- explanatory (direct causality)
- thematic (for contrast/analogy)
 person
- contributors
- narrator (carrying out the narration)
- narrated (the subject of the narration)
- narratee (the addresser of the narration)
- heterodiegetic (narrator absent from the story)
- homodiegetic (narrator present in the story as a character)
- autodiegetic (narrator = hero)
- observer/witness (narrator plays a secondary role) (228-244)
- functions:
- narrative (related to the story)
- directing (related to the narrative text, metanarrative)
- communicative (related to the narrating situation: narrator-narratee)
- testimonial (or of attestation)
- ideological (with a didactic form)

LITERARY CRITICISM. A SHORT OVERVIEW


Literary criticism, generally defined as the study, evaluation and interpretation of literature, has developed during
the twentieth century into a complex, interdisciplinary field of theoretical and applied research informed with
contributions in linguistics, cultural studies, social studies, media and film studies.
In an attempt at establishing some sort of order and logic in the numerous and varied studies carried out in
literary criticism of late, a series of trends/directions have been identified: new criticism, formalism, structuralism,
psychoanalysis, Marxism, new historicism, deconstruction, feminism, postcolonialism, reader-response criticism
etc – all of which bring to the fore key concepts, ideologies and grids considered essential in tackling literary texts
as artistic and cultural products. For the purpose of approaching the selected short story by Salman Rushdie, a
representative few will be resumed in what follows (as summarised by Peter Barry in Beginning Theory. An
Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, 1995).

1. STRUCTURALISM
Structuralist approaches to literature challenge some of the most cherished beliefs of the ordinary reader.
Traditionally, the literary work was looked upon as the child of an author’s creative life, expressing the author’s
essential self. The text was the space where the reader met the author’s feelings and thoughts. Another assumption
was that good books tell the truth about human life. Structuralist critics have tried to persuade of the fact that the
author is ‘dead’ and that literary discourse has no truth function.

Main points of interest:


 the analysis of prose narrative, relating the text to some larger containing structure, such as:
- the conventions of a particular literary genre
- a network of intertextual connections
- a projected model of an underlying universal narrative structure
- a notion of narrative as a complex of recurrent patterns or motifs
 the interpretation of literature in terms of a range of underlying parallels with the structure of language
 the application of the concept of systematic patterning and structuring to the whole field of Western culture and
across cultures, treated as systems of signs
2. POSTSTRUCTURALISM
Poststructuralism (deconstruction) starts from the notion of text-as-psyche, proving wrong all notions of the
existence of an absolute meaning in language, of a transcendental signified, and arguing that the idea that a
speaker/writer might fully possess the significance of the spoken/written word is a false assumption (yet one
situated at the core of Western thought). It aims at revealing the essential paradox at the heart of language: the
logocentric fixation upon plausible but illusory signifieds that base themselves upon some external point of
reference, such as the notion of truth.

Main points of interest:


 reading the text “against itself” so as to expose the so-called “textual subconscious”, where meanings which
may be contrary to surface meaning are expressed
 fixing upon the surface features of the words similarities in sound, the root meaning or “dead” metaphors, so
that they become crucial to the overall meaning
 seeking to show that the text is characterised by disunity rather than unity
 concentrating on a single passage and analysing it so intensely that language explodes into “multiplicities of
meanings”
 looking for shifts and breaks of various kinds in the text and seeing them as evidence of what is repressed or
silenced

3. PSYCHOANALYSIS
Broadly speaking, psychoanalysis has aimed at enacting a critique of subjectivity within the cultural context
through interpreting disconnected or syncopated structures, the reading of disparate narrative details (considered
parts of a larger interpretive pattern) that are not made explicit by the narrative itself, or through showing texts to
have meanings of various types on different levels simultaneously. Principal directions: Freudian, archetypal
(Jung), structuralist (Lacan), feminist (Belsey) etc.

Main points of interest:


 distinguishing, in literary interpretation, between the conscious and the unconscious of the author, the character
or the text itself and considering the text as dream (double-layered)
 observing the inner workings of the Oedipus complex within and without the text (the anxiety of influence)
 privileging the psychic drama over the social drama (emphasis on inner conflict and its personal/cultural roots)
 favouring the anti-realist text which challenges the conventions of literary representation
 identifying and decoding the typical, recurrent images or archetypes which reach the surface of the text under
the shape of repetitive patterns, recurrent themes, characters, techniques – whose analysis leads back to the
deeper level that may thus be accounted for

4. MARXISM
Even if Marx made his famous statements about culture and society in the 1850s, marxist criticism is a twentieth
century phenomenon. Its history is complex and its manifestations diverse, but everything stems from two famous
pronouncements by Marx himself: it is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the
contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness; the philosophers have only interpreted the world in
various ways; the point is to change it.

Main points of interest:


 relating the covert content of a literary work to basic Marxist themes, such as class struggle or the progression
of society through various historical stages
 relating the context of a work to the social-class status of its author
 explaining the nature of literary genres in terms of the social period which produced it
 relating the literary work to the social assumption of the time in which it is “consumed”
 politicising literary form or reading literature as determined by political circumstance

5. POSTCOLONIALISM
Postcolonialism, not to be associated simply with the period of time following colonialism, opposes dominant
discourses and allows for the margins to express themselves. Centre-front is the notion of cultural identity in
colonised societies, its representations, the power structures involved, the politics formulated. Binary opposition
structures are exposed as authoritarian, false and limited, effaced in the approach by references to heterogeneity,
hybridity and transculturalisation.

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Main points of interest:
 rejecting the claims to universalism made by Western canonical literature, especially its inability to
empathise across cultures
 examining the representations of other cultures or of cultural otherness
 showing how canonical literature is evasive and crucially silent on matters concerning colonisation and
imperialism
 foregrounding questions of cultural difference and diversity, celebrating hybridity and cultural polyvalency
 developing a perspective, not only applicable to postcolonial writing, where states of marginality, plurality
and otherness are seen as sources of energy and potential change

6. FEMINISM
Feminist criticism, in all its various manifestations (Marxist, psychoanalytic, structuralist, deconstructive,
postcolonial, black, women-of-colour, third-world etc), has attempted to free itself from that which it considers to
be the naturalized patriarchal (in literature and literary theory). It refuses to be assimilated by any particular
approach, and therefore subverts and contradicts all traditional theoretical practices. From this point of view, it may
very well be defined in terms of a cultural politics.

Main points of interest:


 rethinking the canon so as to rediscover texts written by women
 revaluing women’s experience
 examining representations of women in literature by men and women
 challenging the representations of women as “other”, “lack” or part of “nature”
 examining power relations and reading for political purposes, to show the extent of patriarchy
 recognising the role of language in making the social and constructed seem transparent and natural
 raising the question of whether men and women are different because of biology or are socially constructed as
different
 exploring the question of whether there is a female language, an écriture feminine, and whether it is available to
men
 re-reading psychoanalysis to further explore the issue of female and male identity
 questioning the popular notion of the death of the author and discussing the subject positions constructed in
discourse
 clarifying the ideological base of supposedly “neutral’ or “mainstream” literary interpretations
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