Assignments for self-control

TYPES OF NARRATION

Author's Narrative. Dialogue. Interior

Speech. Represented Speech. Compositional Forms

A work of creative prose is never homogeneous as to the form and essence of the information it carries. Both very much depend on the viewpoint of the addresser, as the author and his personages may offer different angles of perception of the same object. Naturally, it is the author who organizes this effect of polyphony, but we, the readers, while reading the text, identify various views with various personages, not attributing them directly to the writer. The latter's views and emotions are most explicitly expressed in the author's speech (orthe author's narrative).

The unifold plot is mainly concentrated here, personages are given characteristics, the time and the place of action are also described here, as the author sees them. The author's narrative supplies the reader with direct information about the author's preferences and objections, beliefs and contradictions, i.e. serves the major source of shaping up the author's image.

In contemporary prose, in an effort to make his writing more plausible, to impress the reader with the effect of authenticity of the described events, the writer entrusts some fictitious character (who might also participate in the narrated events) with the task of story-telling. The writer himself thus hides behind the figure of the narrator, presents all the events of the story from the latter's viewpoint and only sporadically emerges in the narrative with his own considerations, which may reinforce or contradict those expressed by the narrator. This form of the author's speech is called entrusted narrative. The structure of the entrusted narrative is much more complicated than that of the author's narrative proper, because instead of one commanding, organizing image of the author, we have the hierarchy of the narrator's image seemingly arranging the pros and cons of the related problem and, looming above the narrator's image, there stands the image of the author, the true and actual creator of it all, responsible for all the views and evaluations of the text and serving the major and predominant force of textual cohesion and unity.

Entrusted narrative can be carried out in the 1st person singular, when the narrator proceeds with his story openly and explicitly, from his own name, as, e.g., in The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, or The Great Gatsby by Sc. Fitzgerald, or All the King's Men by R.f.Warren. In the first book Holden Caulfield himself retells about the crisis in his own life which makes the focus of the novel. In the second book Nick Carraway tells about Jay Gatsby, whom he met only occasionally, so that to tell Gatsby's life-story he had to rely on the knowledge of other personages too. And in the third book Jack Burden renders the dramatic career of Willie Stark, himself being one of the closest associates of the man. In the first case the narration has fewer deviations from the main line, than in the other two in which the narrators have to supply the reader also with the information about themselves and their connection with the protagonist.

Entrusted narrative may also be anonymous. The narrator does not openly claim responsibility for the views and evaluations but the manner of presentation, the angle of description very strongly suggest that the story is told not by the author himself but by some of his factotums, which we see, e.g., in the prose of Fl. O'Connor, C. McCullers, E. Hemingway, E. Caldwell.

The narrative, both the author's and the entrusted, is not the only type of narration observed in creative prose. A very important place here is occupied by dialogue, where personages express their minds in the form of uttered speech. In their exchange of remarks the participants of the dialogue, while discussing other people and their actions, expose themselves too. So dialogue is one of the most significant forms of the personage's self-characterization, which allows the author to seemingly eliminate himself from the process.

Another form, which obtained a position of utmost significance in contemporary prose, is interior speech of the personage, which allows the author (and the readers) to peep into the inner world of the character, to observe his ideas and views in the making. Interior speech is best known in the form of interior monologue, a rather lengthy piece of the text (half a page and over) dealing with one major topic of the character's thinking, offering causes for his past, present or future actions. Short insets of interior speech present immediate mental and emotional reactions of the personage to the remark or action of other characters.

The workings of our brain are not intended for communication and are, correspondingly, structured in their own unique way. The imaginative reflection of mental processes, presented in the form of interior speech, being a part of the text, one of the major functions of which is communicative, necessarily undergoes some linguistic structuring to make it understandable to the readers. In extreme cases, though, this desire to be understood by others is outshadowed by the author's effort to portray the disjointed, purely associative manner of thinking, which makes interior speech almost or completely incomprenensible. These cases exercise the so-called stream-of-consciousness technique which is especially popular with representatives of modernism in contemporary literature.

So the personage's viewpoint can be realized in the uttered (dialogue) and inner (interior) speech forms. Both are introduced into the text by the author's remarks containing indication of the personage (his name or the name-substitute) and of the act of speaking (thinking) expressed by such verbs as "to say", "to think" and their numerous synonyms.

To separate and individualize the sphere of the personage, language means employed in the dialogue and interior speech differ from those used in the author's narrative and, in their unity and combination, they constitute the personage's speech characteristic which is indispensable in the creation of his image in the novel.

The last - the fourth - type of narration observed in artistic prose is a peculiar blend of the viewpoints and language spheres of both the author and the character. It was first observed and analysed almost a hundred years ago, with the term represented (reported) speech- attached to it. Represented speech serves to show either the mental reproduction of a once uttered remark, or the character's thinking. The first case is known as represented uttered speech, the second one as represented inner speech. The latter is close to the personage's interior speech in essence, but differs from it in form: it is rendered in the third person singular and may have the author's qualitative words, i.e. it reflects the presence of the author's viewpoint alongside that of the character, while interior speech belongs to the personage completely, formally too, which is materialized through the first-person pronouns and the language idiosyncrasies of the character.

The four types of narration briefly described above are singled out on the basis of the viewpoint commanding the organization of each one. If it is semantics of the text that is taken as the foundation of the classification then we shall deal with the three narrative compositional forms traditionally singled out in poetics and stylistics. They are: narrative proper where the unfolding of the plot is concentrated. This is the most dynamic compositional form of the text. Two other forms - description and argumentation - are static. The former supplies the details of the appearance of people and things "populating" the book, of the place and time of action, the latter offers causes and effects of the personage's behaviour, his (or the author's) considerations about moral, ethical, ideological and other issues. It is rather seldom that any of these compositional forms is used in a "pure", uninterrupted way. As a rule they intermingle even within the boundaries of a paragraph.

All the compositional forms can be found in each of the types of narration but with strongly varying frequences.

Exercise. Find examples of various types of narration and narrative compositional forms. Pay attention to language means used in each one. State their functions. Discuss correlations existing between the type of narration, compositional form and the language of the discourse:

1. Novelists write for countless different reasons: for money, for fame, for reviewers, for parents, for friends, for loved ones; for vanity, for pride, for curiosity, for amusement; as skilled furniture-makers enjoy making furniture, as drunkards like drinking, as judges like judging, as Sicilians like emptying a shotgun into an enemy's back. I could fill a book with reasons, and they would all be true, though not true of all. Only one same reason is shared by all of us: we wish to create worlds as real as, but other than the world that is. Or was. This is why we cannot plan. We know a world is an organism, not a machine. We also know that a genuinely created world must be independent of its creator: a planned world (a world that fully reveals its planning) is a dead world. It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live. (J.F.)

2. He refused a taxi. Exercise, he thought, and no drinking at least a month. That's what does it. The drinking. Beer, martinis, have another. And the way your head felt in the morning. (I.Sh.)

3. Now she come my room, he thought. "What you want?" he demanded.

"May I come in?"

"This house," he said slowly, "she yours."

"Tell me your name," she said. "You," he burst out. "This long time and no know my name - and no ask! What my name? Who me? You no care." (R.W.)

5. "Honestly. I don't feel anything. Except ashamed." "Please. Are you sure? Tell me the truth. You might have been killed." "But I wasn't. And thank you. For saving my life. You're wonderful. Unique. I love you." (T.C.)

6. "What's your Christian name, Sir?" angrily inquired the little Judge. "Nathaniel, Sir." "Daniel - any other name?" "Nathaniel, Sir - my Lord, I mean." "Nathaniel Daniel or Daniel Nathaniel?" "No, my Lord, only Nathaniel - not Daniel at all." "What did you tell me it was Daniel for then, Sir?" inquired the Judge. (D.)

8. "She thought he could be persuaded to come home." "You mean a dinge?"

"No, a Greek."

"Okey," Nulty said and spit into the wastebasket. "Okey. You met the big guy how? You seem to pick up awful easy."

"All right," I said. "Why argue? I've seen the guy and you haven't. In the morning I was a well man again." (R.Ch.)

11. "She's a model at Bergdorf Goodman's." "She French?"

"She's about as French as you are -" "That's more French than you think." (J.O'H.)

21. Holmes was certainly not a difficult man to live with He was quiet in his ways and his habits were regular. It was rare for him to be up after ten at night and he had invariably breakfasted and gone out before I rose in the morning. His very person and appearance were such as to strike the attention of the most casual observer. In height he was rather over six feet and so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller. His eyes were sharp and piercing save during those intervals of torpor to which I have alluded; and his thin hawklike nose gave his whole expression an air of alertness and decision. His chin, too, had the prominence and squareness which mark the man of determination. (C.D.)

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. Indicate the types of narration which you know.

2. What is the difference between the author's narrative proper and the entrusted narrative?

3. What forms of entrusted narrative do you know?

4. Comment on the main functions of the image of the author.

5. How is speech characteristic of a personage formed?

6. What forms of interior speech do you remember?

7. What is represented speech and which of its types have you met more often?

8. What is stream of consciousness? Have you ever observed it in your reading?

9. What narrative compositional forms are mainly represented in a prose work?

10. Which compositional forms are considered static and why?