NOVEL – PART II (06.05.2013)
Ideas about novel – or how to interpret a novel
1. Novel and mimesis
Some realistic novels very painstakingly* recreate the world in which the plot is set; they can
be treated not as a work of fiction but as a very useful source of information about the real
world.
Some fantasy/science fiction novels equally painstakingly create some imaginary (alternative)
realities.
You can think of a novel as something which imitates/represents outside world - mostly common in
realistic novels. The same you can say about non-realistic novels e.g. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. They
represent the world but it’s something imagined by the author.
We get so much details e.g. the language of the elves that we can think of this world as real
– it has an appearance of reality.
direct indirect
2. Mimesis vs. diagesis
Plato actually contrasted mimesis with diagesis:
Mimesis is the art of
showing
.
Diagesis is the art of
telling
.
The form of literature which is about showing things directly is drama. For a long period of time it has
worked without a written text. It was about people acting; something that you could see on the
stage.
Today we live in a world of printed word so in terms of novel more people read plays than see them
in theatre.
The problem with telling a story or saying about something that you don’t know what the thing really
is: what you get is actually somebody’s opinion. It is quite important while analyzing a novel as a
story. we have to be quite careful and suspicious as the readers.
If there’s a story, it has to be told by someone:
3. Omniscient invisible narrator vs. unreliable narrator who’s a part of the story
Omniscient narrator
- an ‘all‐knowing’ kind of narrator very commonly found in works of fiction
written as third‐person narratives. The omniscient narrator has full knowledge of the story's events
and of the motives and unspoken thoughts of the various characters. He or she will also be capable
of describing events happening simultaneously in different places (he’s like God). Usually we cannot
feel his presence – he’s somewhere there because someone has to tell the story (e.g. He entered the
room where he saw three girls – one of them was black, two others were white).
Unreliable narrator
- in fiction, as in life, the unreliable narrator is a narrator who can't be trusted.
Either from ignorance or self-interest, this narrator speaks with a bias**, makes mistakes, or even
lies. Part of the pleasure and challenge of these first-person stories is working out the truth, and
understanding why the narrator is not straightforward. It's also one tool an author uses to create an
aura of authenticity in his or her work. This unreliable narrator shows us her/his feelings connected
to the events happening and it’s somehow linked to the term of diagesis – it’s a presentation of inner
world (the opposite is the mimesis which is connected to the outside world).
The critics are more interested in that unreliable narrator.
There are situations when the narrator seems to be invisible, but if you look deeper – like when
there’s an opinion expressed – you may find the person who’s telling the story e.g. “people have the
tendency to overrate their abilities”. It’s not fact, you may think what kind of person would say
something like that. Farther, if you have a narrator who uses simple language, it also tells you
something about him or her. The question is: Can a narrator hide himself completely? Probably not,
because every piece of writing can show us something about the person (e.g. simple or complicated
vocabulary, long or short sentences).
Sometimes there are few narrators (like connecting pieces of a story told by different people).
4. Point of view - the perspective of the narrative voice. Omniscient narrator frequently may shift
point of view. Like you know everything about the story but you want to tell it firstly from one
character’s perspective, then another. It’s not like changing narrators.
Fragments of
The Red Badge of Courage
by Stephen Crane (1871-1900):
The youth was horrorstricken. He stared in agony and amazement. He forgot that he was engaged in
combating the universe. He threw aside his mental pamphlets on the philosophy of the retreated and
rules for the guidance of the damned.
This is like one of the classic stories of American literature. There’s a guy, Henry Fleming who has
dreamt of becoming a war hero. Showing his courage on the battlefield was the thing he wanted.
And then the war broke out and the man joined the army. This is mostly the story of his
disappointment - the war is not like he imagined, but he still thinks that when he’ll come back home,
all the girls will love him.
(…) He saw his gaping audience picturing him as the central figure in blazing scenes. And he imagined
the consternation and the ejaculations of his mother and the young lady at the semi-nary as they
drank his recitals. Their vague feminine formula for beloved ones doing brave deeds on the field of
battle with-out risk of life would be destroyed.
He thinks about these girls who know nothing about the war and he’d be like a veteran who can tell
them the story of the war really looks like with details.
Who’s perspective is this: the boy’s or the narrator’s? Can the young man be THAT stupid? Is he an
idiot or is narrator the one who makes him look like one? Most likely Henry’s thoughts were
manipulated by the narrator. It’s like the narrator was putting words in Henry’s mouth to express his
own opinion, because we know that Henry thinks he’s a hero.
Sometimes it’s difficult to draw a line between the narrator’s and the character’s point of view. Like
he was saying: Your point of view won't be your point of view - it will be my point of view of your point
of view so it'll be my point of view rather than your point of view.
5. Stream of consciousness
Modernist artists experimented with narrative techniques quite a lot. They’re most famous because
of creating stream of consciousness (e.g. Virginia Woolf). It’s a narrative device used in literature "to
depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind”. Another phrase for it
is 'interior monologue'.
How does it affect the story?
We get a sequence of flashbacks and flash-forwards so you don’t get a chronological story. Like you
may think: “oh, it’s a nice weather. I do remember such a nice weather last year when I failed my
history of literature exam, but now it’ll be different (…)”. There’s sort of lack of coherence***,
because when people think – usually they do not think in full sentences. When we write something
down we introduce some kind of order, logic, structure of thoughts, but when we think it’s
happening quickly and sometimes it’s not very grammatically correct.
A fragment of William Faulkner’s
:
As I Lay Dying
It’s because he stays out there, right under the window, hammering and sawing on that goddamn
box. Where she’s got to see him. Where every breath she draws is full of his knocking and sawing
where she can see him saying See. See what a good one I am making for you. I told him to go
somewhere else. I said Good God do you want to see her in it. It’s like when he was a little boy and
she says if she had some fertilizer she would try to raise some flowers and he taken the bread pan and
brought it back from the barn full of dung.
/The book is told in stream of consciousness writing style by 15 different narrators in 59 chapters. It
is the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her family's quest—noble or selfish—to honor her
wish to be buried in the town of Jefferson./
6. Narratology – it’s a scholarly discipline that studies narrative. It introduced:
analepsis
(flashback) you move back
prolepsis
(flash-forward) it’s about the future
frame narrative
(a story within a story)
This branch of science is rather focused on the story itself rather than the narrator and it analyses the
structure of narrative. It’s also present at cinema even though it tells a story by showing things e.g.
there’s a guy shooting a lady and another man comes, stops the guy with a knives and there’s the
funeral and everybody’s crying. You don’t need any words in order to “tell” the story.
What’s the difference between a novel and a movie?
There’s no narrator in the movie. Movies do not need a narrator, because they’ll show you things
directly. So the cinema is like the drama: it’s about direct presentation.
Frame narrative – how does it work?
one story
the other one
e.g. there’s a story about a guy living in an old house who goes to the attic and there finds an old
manuscript and starts reading it and there’s a story about a young woman being kidnapped by an evil
gold prospector, impregnated and then left to die in the jungle of the Amazon…
*drobiazgowo
**uprzedzenie
***zgodność/spójność