08 Literary Narrative Fiction Genres of Narrative Fiction

08 Literary Narrative Fiction Genres of Narrative Fiction History of the Form Story, Plot, Narrative Voice

Recap: Narratives Personal, political, historical, legal, medical narratives: narrative’s power to capture certain truths and experiences in special ways unlike other modes of explanation and analysis such as statistics, descriptions, summaries, or reasoning via conceptual abstractions

The spectrum of fiction fact – fiction – truth? History Realism Romance Fantasy Realism vs Romance: a matter of perception vs a matter of vision two principal ways fiction can be related to life

Literary narrative fiction literature: art of language kinds of Iiterature: poetry, drama, narrative fiction prose: from Latin prosa or proversa oratio =‘straightforward discourse’ (as contrasted to verse) M. Jourdain: I've been speaking in PROSE all along! Moliere (1622 -1673), Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme

Literary conventions an agreement between artist and audience as to the significance of features appearing in a work of art knowledge of conventions = literary competence narrative: tells of real or imagined events; tells a story fiction: an imagined creation in verse/prose/drama story: (imagined) events or happenings, involving a conflict plot: arrangement of action → structure

Literary, narrative, fictional: distinct features, do not presuppose each other • Where do we place lyric poetry? Marie-Laure Ryan, Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana UP, 1991

Literary, narrative, fictional: examples literary narrative fictional + + + - - - + + - - - Lit. narr. fict. Nonlit. nonnarr. nonfiction

The history of fiction • Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (1957) • Dale Spender, Mothers of the Novel (1988) • Margaret Anne Doody, The True Story of the Novel (1996)

Novel In: J. A. Cuddon: Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. London: Penguin, 1999 Derived from Italian novella, 'tale, piece of news‘ applied to a wide variety of writings only common attribute is that they are extended pieces of prose fiction The length of novels varies greatly (when is a novel not a novel but a long short-story or a short novel or a novella? ) Fewer and fewer rules in contemporary practice a novel is between 6070. 000 words and 200. 000.

Cuddon Novel (the term) Meanings and implications of the term at different stages: 15 th to 18 th cc. its meaning tended to derive from the Italian novella and the Spanish novela (the French term nouvelle is closely related). The term (often used in a plural sense) denoted short stories or tales of the kind one finds in Boccaccio's Decameron (c. 1349 - 51). Nowadays we would classify all the contents of these as short stories.

Cuddon Novel /novelty Meaning of the term: a prose narrative about characters and their actions in what was recognizably everyday life, usually in the present, with the emphasis on things being 'new' or a 'novelty'. It was used in contradistinction to 'romance'. In the 19 th c. the concept of 'novel' was enlarged.

Cuddon Novel (as a form) The form - susceptible to change and development Pliable and adaptable to a seemingly endless variety of topic and themes A wide range of sub-species or categories.

Cuddon Novel (subject matter) The subject matter of the novel eludes classification. A number of these classifications shade off into each other. For example: psychological novel is a term which embraces many books; proletarian, propaganda and thesis novels tend to have much in common; the picaresque narrative is often a novel of adventure; a saga novel may also be a regional novel.

Cuddon Novel (origins) The origins of the genre are obscure but in the time of the XIIth Dynasty Middle Kingdom (c. 1200 BC) Egyptians were writing fiction of a kind which one would describe as a novel today

Cuddon Novel (early) From Classical times: Daphnis and Chloe (2 nd c. BC) by Longus The Golden Ass (2 nd c. AD) by Apuleius Satyricon (1 st c. AD) of Petronius Arbiter Most of these are concerned with love and contain the rudiments of novels as we understand them today

Cuddon Novel (Oriental) Oriental prose fiction: Arabian Nights‘ Entertainments, or The Thousand One Nights, 10 th c. the collection, collected and established as a group of stories probably by an Egyptian professional story-teller at some time between the 14 th and 16 th c. Became known in Europe early in the 18 th c. , since when they have had a considerable influence.

Cuddon Novel (forerunners of) Collections of novella or short tales, integrated Italy: Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron (1349– 52, revised 1370– 1371) influence on Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (late 14 th c. ) Matteo Bandello’s Le Novelle (written between 1510– 1560) France: Marguerite of Navarre‘ Heptaméron (published in 1558) written in prose form method of narration creation and development of character

Cuddon Novel (from verse to prose) Until 14 th c. literature of entertainment mostly confined to narrative verse, particularly the epic and the romance. Romance → the word roman, which is the term for novel in most European languages. Novel ← in some ways a descendant of the medieval romances, which, in the first place, like the epic, were written in verse and then in prose (e. g. Malory's Morte D'Arthur, 1485) prose narratives by the end of the 17 th c.

Cuddon Novel (Spain, France) Spain: ahead of the rest of Europe in the development of the novel form. Cervantes's Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605, 1615) satirized chivalry and a number of the earlier novels France Rabelais's Gargantua (1534) and Pantagruel (1532) can be classed as novels of phantasy (later examples may be loosely described as science fiction)

Cuddon Novel (England) England, end of the 15 th c. , extended prose narrative: John Lyly's Euphues (in two parts, 1578 and 1580 Sir Philip Sidney's pastoral romance Arcadia (1590). 1719 – Daniel Defoe published his story of adventure Robinson Crusoe (tradition of desert island fiction) Defoe, Moll Flanders (1722), a sociological novel, A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), historical fiction

Sub-genres Integrated short stories Arabian Nights' Entertainments, or The Thousand One Nights, Boccaccio, Decameron James Joyce, Dubliners

Sub-genres Romance any sort of story of chivalry or of love Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605 -1615) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (14 th c. ) Thomas Malory, Le Morte D’Arthur (15 th c. )

Sub-genres Pastoral romance Longus, Daphnis and Chloe (2 nd c. A. D. ) Philip Sidney, Arcadia (1590) Anti-pastoral: Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891), Jude the Obscure (1895)

Sub-genres Picaresque novel (Sp pícaro, ‘rogue’) tells the life of a knave or a picaroon who is the servant of several masters Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders (1722) Henry Fielding, Jonathan Wild (1743)

Sub-genres Novel of adventure / desert island novel related to the picaresque novel and the romance Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719) R. L. Stevenson, Treasure Island (1883) Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer (1876) Huckleberry Finn (1885) James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans (1826)

Sub-genres Gothic novel a type of romance, popular from the 1760 s until the 1820 s, has terror and cruelty as main themes, impact on the ghost story and the horror story Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764 Ann Radcliffe, Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)

Sub-genres Gothic novel (continued) Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (1818) Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861) R. L. Stevenson, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) (Doppelgänger, the Other within/projected) (later: horror films, thrillers)

Sub-genres Epistolary novel in the form of letters, popular in the 18 th c. Samuel Richardson, Pamela (1740) and Clarissa Harlowe (1747, 1748) Tobias Smollett, Humphrey Clinker (1771)

Sub-genres Sentimental novel / novel of sentimentality popular in the 18 th c. , distresses of the virtuous Samuel Richardson, Pamela (1740) Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)

Sub-genres Historical novel a form of fictional narrative which reconstructs history imaginatively Walter Scott, Waverly (1814) William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair (1847 -48) Robert Graves, I, Claudius (1934) William Golding, Rites of Passage (1980)

Sub-genres Documentary novel based on documentary evidence in the shape of newspaper article, etc. Truman Capote, In Cold Blood (1966) Graham Greene, The Quiet American (1955)

Sub-genres Key novel actual persons are presented under fictitious names Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point (1928) (D. H. Lawrence)

Sub-genres Thesis / sociological / propaganda novel treats of a social, political, religious problem Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) The Condition of England novel /regional novel Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854) Charlotte Brontë, Shirley (1849) Mrs Gaskell, North and South (1855)

Sub-genres Utopia [gr. Ou + topos = no place adn eutopia = place where all is well] Thomas More, Utopia (1516) George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (1726, 1735) William Golding, Lord of the Flies (1954) Anti-utopia, dystopia; Science fiction; Phantasy or Fantasy

Sub-genres Campus novel has a university campus as setting Mary Mc. Carthy, The Groves of Academe (1952) Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim (1954) David Lodge, Changing Places (1975)

Sub-genres The saga / chronicle novel narrative about the life of a large family John Galsworthy, Forsyte Saga (1906 -1921)

Sub-genres Time novel employs stream of consciousness technique, time is used as a theme James Joyce, Ulysses (1922) Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu (1913 -1927)

Sub-genres Psychological novel concerned with emotional, mental lives of the characters Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925)

Jane Austen. © North Wind Picture Archives

http: //www. janeausten. org/pride-andprejudice/chapter-1. asp

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813) www. gutenberg. org/files/1342 -h/1342 h. htm#link 2 HCH 0001 It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

“My dear Mr. Bennet, ” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last? ” Mr. Bennet replied that he had not. “But it is, ” returned she; “for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it. ” Mr. Bennet made no answer. “Do you not want to know who has taken it? ” cried his wife impatiently. “You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it. ”

The New York Times Art and Design Pride, Prejudice, Promotion? Mr. Darcy Rising By SARAH LYALL, July 9, 2013 In Hyde Park on Monday morning … Mr. Darcy emerged from the water yet again, like some sort of Arthurian resurrection, this time in the form of a 12 -foot-tall statue plunked in the middle of the Serpentine.

Who would not have swooned at the sight of a manfully tousled Colin Firth striding moodily around in his wet shirt during the broadcast of the 1995 BBC mini-series “Pride and Prejudice”? The scene — in which Mr. Firth’s character, Mr. Darcy, bumps into Elizabeth Bennet (Jennifer Ehle) after taking an impetuous swim on his estate — caused serious chest palpitations among those viewers who were not dead.

The Lake Scene (Colin Firth Strips Off) - Pride and Prejudice - BBC

The work was removed later in the day and will tour other lakes in Britain before ending up at Lyme Park, where the mini-series was partly filmed and where super-keen visitors occasionally show up wearing (nonwet) Lizzieand-Darcy costumes of their own. .

Question for you: Have we actually seen Mr. Darcy in his wet shirt?

Another question: Have we actually seen Mr. Darcy in his wet shirt? If we have not seen Mr. Darcy in his wet shirt, why has this image become of such iconic importance as to inspire a statue?

Yet another question: And why do we seem to recognize this image, why do we seem to think we have seen it?

Possible answers: - Human memory (including the memory of readers and audiences) will distort images: memory will delete or add elements, it will change proportions and emphasis; - Readers and viewers will fill in gaps, very much like we fill in gaps in regular communication; -The human mind will try to make sense of events, will offer interpretations

The original They were within twenty yards of each other, and so abrupt was his appearance, that it was impossible to avoid his sight. Their eyes instantly met, and the cheeks of each were overspread with the deepest blush. He absolutely started, and for a moment seemed immoveable from surprise; but shortly recovering himself, advanced towards the party, and spoke to Elizabeth, if not in terms of perfect composure, at least of perfect civility.

The original text - Do we read about Mr. Darcy in a wet shirt? - Does Mr. Darcy get wet at all? - Yet both Elizabeth and Darcy are greatly embarrassed

Visual representation • Darcy is at home, he is less formal • He has shown himself without his proud manners already in his letter

The gap we filled: In general, we have little access to what Mr. Darcy feels or thinks in the novel. Most of the narration is devoted to what Elizabeth knows or thinks or feels; we read her letters, we hear what she hears, and, therefore, Mr. Darcy is as much of a mystery to us as he is to Elizabeth. We are starved for information about him and it is delightful to get an independent glimpse at the character – which is a feature the film is obliged to offer in addition.

Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice

Building blocks of narrative types of character (» roles) types of event types of lack and restoration types of getting from beginning to end (How do you know it is the end of the story? ) • types of setting • types of narrator • •

Characters characterization: flat vs round characters E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (1927) - flat: easily recognized, easily remembered but a failure to realize the complexities of the ordinary human mind - round: more highly organized

Flat characters, according to Forster Flat characters were called “humours” in the seventeenth century, and are sometimes called types, and sometimes caricatures. In their purest form, they are constructed round a single idea or quality: when there is more than one factor in them, we get the beginning of the curve towards the round. The really flat character can be expressed in one sentence such as “I never will desert Mr. Micawber. ”

Round charactes, according to Forster The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way. If it never surprises, it is flat. If it does not convince, it is a flat pretending to be round. It has the incalculability of life about it—life within the pages of a book. And by using it sometimes alone, more often in combination with the other kind, the novelist … harmonizes the human race with the other aspects of his work.

… vs stereotypes: characters based on conscious or unconscious cultural assumptions that sex, age, ethnic or national identification, occupation, marital status and so on, are predictably accompanied by certain character traits, actions, even values

Forster vs Aristotle “CHARACTER, ” says Aristotle, “gives us qualities, but it is in actions—what we do—that we are happy or the reverse. ” We have already decided that Aristotle is wrong and now we must face the consequences of disagreeing with him. “All human happiness and misery, ” says Aristotle, “take the form of action. ” We know better. We believe that happiness and misery exist in the secret life,

Forster vs Aristotle, cont. which each of us leads privately and to which (in his characters) the novelist has access. And by the secret life we mean the life for which there is no external evidence, not, as is vulgarly supposed, that which is revealed by a chance word or a sigh. A chance word or sigh are just as much evidence as a speech or a murder: the life they reveal ceases to be secret and enters the realm of action.

Story: Arrangement of events • with a particular kind of beginning and ending orientation, closure, coda • usually told for a purpose • typically about change: situation A changes to situation B lack leads to restoration

Plot: Structure structure: connecting elements, repetition, parallelism selection, connection, ordering of information leading to a recognition moving to illuminate the beginning by the ending

Setting The space where the narrative takes place: rural setting, urban setting, nature scenes, country houses etc. Settings often echo or emphasize other features: - the Bennets’ house - Netherfield Park - Pemberley

Space and Time James Joyce, Ulysses (1922) Dublin, 16 June 1904 Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925) London, a single day in June, after WWI

Narrator, narration narrator: one who tells a story within/outside the space and time of story Who tells the story? To whom? Why? How? narration: narrative perspective: point of view author ≠ author's persona (mask) ≠ narrator (Samuel Clemens vs Mark Twain)

Narrator, narration, narrative • account of a sequence of connected events • told by a narrator what happened vs how it is told 'story' 'narration' Narration - rearranges the order of events e. g. , flashback: historical time vs narrated order - sets up relations between events e. g. , cause and effect

Narrative perspective • viewing aspect: focus like a movie camera: choosing, framing, emphasizing, distorting limited/unlimited (omniscient narrator) stand back: dramatic focus • verbal aspect: voice

Point of view • visual perspective • ideological framework • basic types of narration: 1 st-person (I-narration) 3 rd-person (they-narration) e. g. , 'window' on text: seems objective internal vs external restricted knowledge vs unrestricted knowledge (seemed, looked as if) • texts with instability of point of view: watch out for WHO experiences, and WHAT is experienced

Focalization • external focalization: unidentified narrator • character focalization: a character experiences focalizer: the one who is looking focalized: what is being focussed on expression and construction of types of consciousness and self-consciousness Shifting narrative viewpoints, several narrators: Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)

Narratology the study of narrative in literature Early examples in the 20 th century: Vladimir Propp (Russian Formalist) Morphology of the Folktale (1928) Claude Lévi-Strauss (Structuralist) Anthropologie Structurale (1958) (myths) Gérard Genette, Narrative discourse (1972)

Gérard Genette (1930 -2018) Based on the distinction between story and plot (fabula and syuzhet in Russian formalism) - récit (the chronological order of events in a text or narrative) - histoire (the sequence in which events actually occur) - narration (the act of narrating) (Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse, 1972)

Gérard Genette’s system narrative: the result of the interaction of its component levels 3 basic kinds of narrator: - narrator is absent from his own narrative ((‘heterodiegetic narrator’)) - narrator is inside his narrative (1 st person) ((‘homodiegetic narrator’)) - narrator is inside his narrative and also main character ((‘autodiegetic narrator’))

Roland Barthes (1915 -1980) France: from structuralism to poststructuralism attempt to describe narrative as a formal system based on the model of a grammar ‘The death of the Author’ (essay from 1967) (against the concept of the author as a way of forcing a meaning on to a text) S/Z (1970) a critical reading of Balzac’s Sarrasine text open to interpretation

Books on Fiction Booth, Wayne: The Rhetoric of Fiction. Second edition. London: Penguin, 1991 (1983) Lodge, David: The Art of Fiction. London: Penguin, 1992 Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith: Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. London and New York: Methuen, 1983

Adaptation as a form of interpretation An adaptation such as a film version - will add or omit elements - will place emphases differently - will fill in gaps but will also limit the readers’ possible interpretations to the one(s) actually presented or suggested

Pride and Prejudice Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier in Pride and Prejudice (1940) directed by Robert Z. Leonard. © 1940 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.

Elizabeth and Mr Darcyy Hugh Thomson, 1894

2004, Bollywood version (GB-USA) Bride and Prejudice Director: Gurinder Chadha Writers: Gurinder Chadha, Paul Mayeda Berges Music: Anu Malik, Craig Pruess Cinematography: Santosh Sivan Producer: Gurinder Chadha, Deepak Nayar Film editing: Justin Krish

Hindi cinema, often known as Bollywood and formerly as Bombay cinema, is the Hindilanguage film industry based in Mumbai (formerly Bombay). The term is a portmanteau of "Bombay" and "Hollywood". Bride and Prejudice is a 2004 romantic drama film directed by Gurinder Chadha, a Bollywood-style adaptation of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

Bride & Prejudice Dance Scene https: //youtu. be/ Po. Lt. Hq. S_Lh. A

Pride and Prejudice, 2005 Director: Joe Wright Writers: Deborah Moggach, Emma Thompson (IMDb) Mr. Darcy: Matthew Macfadyen Elizabeth Bennet: Keira Knightley Music: Dario Marianelli Cinematography: Roman Osin Film editing: Paul Tothill

http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=8 U 56 CTl. Gkx 8

Weather in harmony with emotions http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=DNZ 5 NXKtdxs

Nature as a setting for the passions http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=DNZ 5 NXKtdxs

Interiors: composed posture, clothing, furniture http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=f 1 Uq 5 ZAsc. Vg

Formal behaviour, colour coordinated fabrics, composed posture – in contrast with emotions http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=f 1 Uq 5 ZAsc. Vg

Times of day: night time http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=ONa. Pfzjl 8 qc

Times of day: dawn in nature http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=5 Wrg. MUXlg. Mw&feature=player_detailpage

Mr. Darcy at home http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=DZq. Oh. S 2 M-DU

(Cultural context? Which fairy tale? )