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32: The narrative text. Structure and characteristics - Coggle Diagram
32: The narrative text. Structure and characteristics
Introduction
When narrating: coherence (background knowledge, links with context), cohesion (reference, substitution, ellipsis...).
Narrator, pop, structural and stylistic characteristics
Definition and elements
The art of telling a story. Events at a particular time, particular setting, particular circumstances.
Main elements:
Action: what happens
Characters: performers (human, non-human)
Setting: when and where
Structure
Orientation: participants, when and where
Complications: core. Whole of events which provoke a conflict and force a transformation through actions.
Resolution: how problems were solved, final situation. If moral purpose: CODA.
Temporality
Order or sequence
Chronological order
Anachronism (not chronological)
Retrospectively: future to past. Analysis.
Prospectively: present to future. Prolepsis
Plot vs story
Plot: the way in which events appear in the narrative, chronological or not
Story: whole of events, chronologically
Narrative techniques
Toolan. Writer and narrator may or not coincide. Different techniques: narrative point of view.
First person narrator
: writer invents and impersonates a character, story from their pov. Author + narrator + main character the same (not always). Verosimilitude. Not same opinions.
Sherlock Holmes The Hunger Games
Omniscient narrator
: common. Above the characters, knows what they think and feel. 3rd person, we.
Pride and Prejudice.
Third person narrator
: 3rd person, not control characters. Not know feelings, emotions. Sometimes comments. I.
A Game of Thrones.
Combined povs
: more than one narrator. 1st or 3rd person. Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales
Types of speech presentation
Direct speech
: characters speak for themselves. Actual words. Proximity, naturalness.
Free direct speech
: characters' voices interrupt the narrator
Indirect speech
: interpretation of the words.
Free indirect speech
: no indication of speaker
Varieties of narrative text
Fictional narrative
: story that although we have no record of it having happened, it's told as if it were true. Imagined events
Anecdote: brief story, humorous
Fable: short story, moral. Self-evident conclusion
Factual narrative
: true story, record of events. History, biography, news story.
Stylistic, structural and lexical characteristics of narrative texts
Structural characteristics
Verb forms: active, pasive, simple, past, present, present perf, continuous (up to now, relevant)
Passive forms: objective type.
Modal vbs, conditional: possibilities are speculated on, condicionts examined, cause and effect
Clause and sentence length: varies
Lexical characteristics
Lexical complexity: more subjective and informal, lower Latin forms, more idiomatic, phrasal vbs, semantic linkers
Lexical categories: times, dates, temporal reference words. Abstract nouns, static vbs of emotion not as often as nouns and dynamic vbs, contrastive structures
Graphology: chapters, sections, scenes, acts
Stylistic characteristics
Evocative: emotional responses, connotation, dialect
Hyperbolic: unusual excitement or surprise
Formal style: respect, precision, less idiomatic
Persuasive: intensifiers, parenthesis, attitudinal comments
Informal style: close relationship, jokes, anecdotes, letters
Neutral style: not connotation
Technical: shared knowledge w audience, exact, specialised lexis
Subjective texts: 1st, 3rd p.
Objective texts: 3rd p, they, we.
Metaphorical: subjective narrative texts, imaginative way of describing sth