Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
TOPIC 32: THE NARRATIVE TEXT. STRUCTURE AND CHARACTERISTICS, Txt is richer…
TOPIC 32: THE NARRATIVE TEXT. STRUCTURE AND CHARACTERISTICS
1. TYPES OF TEXTS
difficult to establish clear boundaries
Narration
Description
Argument
Exposition
Dialogue
2. TYPES OF NARRATIVE TEXTS
Narration
:arrow_right: telling of actions or events that happen at various times and places
Non-fictional narrative
:pencil2: history books, encyclopaedias, reports at a trial
based on objective accounts of events
:pencil2: autobiography memoir or personal diary
cross boundaries of the objective/subjective distinction
Fictional narrative
long and complex narration usually combining narration, dialogue and description of people, actions or events, that happen at various times and places
Most popular narrative :arrow_right:
narration
many sub-genres :pencil2: adventure, fantasy, horror, romance, etc.
Other varieties of narration :pencil2: anecdote, short fable or parabole, short story, etc.
3. NARRATIVE TEXTS:ELEMENTS AND STRUCTURE
Main elements of narrative texts
Narrator
Characters
Setting
provides the reader with a set of spatio-temporal references about the fictional world
depending on the
relevance of their role
Protagonists
Secondary
based on a relation
of opposition
Protagonist / Hero
Antagonist / Villain
E.M. Foster's
classification
Flat characters
:arrow_right: constructed around a single idea or quality
Round characters
:arrow_right: who transforma themselves and change
Author
:arrow_right: person who wrote the text
Narrator
:arrow_right: one who tells the story to the readers
Structure of narrative texts
Setting
Complication
Resolution
or climax
where the conflict or drama is resolved and the goal attained. Story reaches its end
the whole of events in which the story teller follows the story line
, dealing with the events that have a conflict or drama in attaining a goal**
deals with and shows the context where events take place
:pencil2: the introductions of characters and situation, the telling of previous events and situation on place and time
4. ORDER OF THE ELEMENTS OF A NARRATION
Story
:arrow_right: events that constitute the narrative arranged in chronological order
Plot
:arrow_right: way in which the writer organises these events in the narrative, whether chronological order or not
Chronological order
Narrative organized on the
basis of time and logical mechanisms
Verb
carries the movement of the story
Continuity
made by the
continuation of the same subject
from one sentence to another
More emphasized by
adverbs
(
then, afterwards, when, etc.
) or by
adverbial clauses
(
when we got there..., after we had left...
)
In modern narrative
Flashbacks
:arrow_right: scenes that represent events that happened before the events of the plot happened
Flash forwards
:arrow_right: bringing the story forwards
In media res
:arrow_right: literary technique where the narrative starts in the middle of the story instead of from the beginning
Anachronies
Analepsis
:arrow_right: explaining the events retrospectively
Prolepsis
:arrow_right: explaining the events prospectively, anticipating thus the events that have not occurred yet
5. NARRATION AND POINT OF VIEW
Third-person narrator
according to the degree of limitation
which the author assumes in getting
the story accross to the reader
Omniscient narrator
all-knowing and all-seeing, but without a personality of its own
privileged access to the character's thoughts, feelings and motives
free to move at will in time and place, to shift from character to character and to report their speech, doings and states of consciousness
Objective narrator
AKA
'camera eye' point of view
presents actions, speeches and appearances without comment and without entering into the minds of any of the characters
Limited narrator
Through the focusing consciousness of only one of the characters
someone outside the story who
refers to all the characters in the story
by name or as "she", "he", "they"
First-person narrator
Story-teller usually invents and
then impersonates a character
who tells his own stroy from his
point of view, referring to himself
as 'I'
I
= only a
witness
of the matters he related or a
minor or peripheral participant
in the story
I
= himself the
central character
in the story :pencil2: Gulliver in "Gulliver's Travels"
Stream of consciousness
Method of narration that describes happenings in the flow of thoughts, memories, feelings and associations that impigne on the consciousness of the narrator and constitute his total awareness
Used by
James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner
among others
6. MODES OF SPEECH PRESENTATION
Textual speech
:arrow_right: formed by the voices of al the characters
Direct speech
actual words uttered by a character, often accompanied by the appropriate graphological indications:
hyphenation or italicisation
Advantages :check:
Provides character autonomy to speak directly
Creates impression of naturalness, proximity + intimacy
Presentation original register of formality by preserving original lexis and syntactic features of actual utterance :arrow_right: helps creation of impression of naturalness
Limitations :red_cross: implies abrupt transition from languages of narration to speech
Indirect speech
:check: Offers a gain in pace and economy :red_cross: by way of compensation for the loss of immediacy
:check: Combines more readily with narrative style, making possible a free movement from one to the another
Although traditionally :arrow_right: neutral style :check: not involve total renunciation to the attempt to represent individual varieties of speech
Free indirect speech
Half-way stage btw direct and indirect speech
Form of indirect speech but...
No reporting verb
Maintains direct structure :pencil2: keeps inversion in questions
Recognisable as indirect speech because...
Back shift in verb tenses
Changes in pronouns, possessive adjectives and expressions of time and place
:check: Opportunity to combine some advantages of both direct + indirect forms
Preserving such "emotive elements" :pencil2: questions, interjections, exclamations, colloquial language and slang and vulgar terms
Txt is richer offering stylistic variety in lexis, syntax, phonology dialect + register