Narrative Discour
By Gerard Genette Pbed in 1980
Narratology denotes both the theory and the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that the affect our perception. As a matter of fact, this word is an anglicisation of French word narratologie, coined by Tzvetan Todorov (Grammaire du Décaméron, 1969). Since the 1960’s, the contemporary narrative theory has been rapidly developing towards maturity, in which French structuralist critic Gerard Genette plays a pivotal role. On the basis of absorbing the others’ rearch results, he constructs his own narrative theory, who origin mainly includes Saussure Linguistics, Structuralism, Russian Formalism, and New Criticism.
骨肉相连Russian formalists argue that芦荟介绍 the literary characteristic is not what to write but how to write. Literary narrative mainly includes “sjuzhet” (plot) and “f粘土作品图片abula” (usually refers to story. Fabula and sjuzhet (also syuzhet, sujet, sjužet, or suzet) are terms originating in Russian F
ormalism and employed in narratology that describe narrative construction. Sjuzhet is an employment of narrative and fabula is the order of retelling events. They were first ud in this n by Vladimir Propp and Shklovsky.). And the plot determines the story. On the basis of this formalist concept, Propp places emphasis on form and structure of works in his Morphology of the Folktale (1928). But he only takes穿着礼仪 note of the syntactic relationship of the surface of the story. Later Gremas, Levi Strauss, 谣and French narratologist Bremond carry out a ries of comprehensive rearches on the relationship between 干的近义词the surface and deep structures of the story, and sum up a wide variety of grammatical patterns of the story. Though large and vague, the narrative structure models provide a great reference for Genette. New Criticism reprentatives Brooks and Warren collaborate on Understanding Fiction(1979), put forward the question of “who speaks”, and hence draw forth the concept of “focus of narration”, which lays a solid foundation for Genette’s "focalization" theory. Moreover, as far as the study of the narrative formula, it is obvious that Genette is influenced by Wayne Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction (1983). However, in terms of the narrative form, Booth has a similar view to New Critics.
Accepting and absorbing the above-mentioned scholars’ advantages and strengths, Genette published 香港回归多少年Narrative Discour in 1972, which makes Marcel Proust’s In arch of Lost Time果然天空 the rearch object and propos his own unique narrative outlook. In the book, at first he indicates that narrative contains three distinct notions, namely, narrative, story and narrating, and further distinguishes them. Narrative refers to narrative discour, which means “the narrative statement, the oral or written discour that undertakes to tell of an event or a ries of events” (Genette, 1980: 25). Story means an event or a ries of events told in narrative discour, real of fictitious. Narrating is the act of someone recounting something. To analyzing narrative discour is, esntially, to study the relationship between narrative and story, between narrative and narrating, and between story and narrating.
Excluding Introduction and Afterword, Narrative Discour is divided into five chapters, which are Order, Frequency, Duration, Mood, and Voice in turn. In the five chapters, Genette at length analyzes the artistic techniques of In arch of Lost Time, and hence summarizes and establishes a t of his own narratology. Genette incorporates French st
ructuralist narrative theories, constructs rather comprehensive and systematic narrative theory, and thus lays a solid foundation for contemporary narratology. It is under the influence of his narrative discour that many subquent scholars and experts such as Miede Bal, Gerald Prince, and Rimmon-Kenan further explore and deeply dig the narrative theories. The scholars speak highly of his narrative discour, and in the meantime put forward some doubts and challenges, in view of which Genette also published Nouveau discours du récit (new narrative discour) in 1983 as a respon. In this new narrative discour, he discuss such questions as the classification of person, the application of the prent ten, the interrelation between mood and voice, and focalization, and conquently interprets and perfects his narrative theory.
In short, Genette prents a lot of concepts which has become the standard terms of classic in the narrative field. Besides, the publication of his Narrative Discour has aroud strong reaction and nsation in the literary theory circle. According to his narrative theory, many analyze and interpret the specific works and bear great fruit.
Chapter One order
Time is thought of as a uni-directional and irreversible flow, a sort of one-way street, just as Heraclitus said early in western history: “You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and yet other waters go ever flowing on.” However, as far as narrative activity is concerned, “the time of even the simplest story escapes the ordinary notion of time conceived as a ries of instants succeeding one another along an abstract line oriented in a single direction” (Ricoeur, 1980: 169). Narrative is the art of TIME, which is the main subject that the majority of structuralist narratological works dwell on. In narratives, TIME can be defined as the relations of chronology between story and text, posssing the duality, namely, the time of the thing told and the time of the narrative. German theoreticians refers to this kind of temporal duality as the opposition between “erzählte Zeit” (story time) and Erzählzeit (narrative time). In Les catégories du récit littéraire, Todorov divides the narrative into three categories: ten, aspect, and mood. Here the ten means the relationship between the story time and the discour time.
