Narration Flashcards
Three discriminations made with regard the narrator
- Voice
- Focalization
- Distance
Narrator
An instrument , a construction, or a device wielded by the author.
Direct discourse or thought
Citing a character’s own words. Like:
He threw his glove in the pavement, the tears welling in his eyes, and said, “ this is it, Rodney. I must ask you to choose your weapon.”
Indirect discourse or thought
Speech or thinking of a character rendered in the narrator’s own words.
Interior monologue
A number of radical experimental modes of direct style used to convey the thinking and feeling of a character without the usual grammatical tags.
Though report
Does not labor under the burden oaf trying to imitate the way characters think
Voice
It’s a question of who it is we “hear” doing the narrating.
Two principal kinds of narration (voice)
- The first-person ( I woke up this morning…)
- Third-person ( she woke up this morning…)
Omniscient narration
All knowing
Focalization
An awkward coinage, but it serves a useful purpose that the vaguer and more dispute term point of view cannot.
It refers to the lens through which we see the characters and events in the narrative.
Distance
Refers to the narrator’s degree of involvement in the story he tells.
Diegesis
- Term adapted to refer to the world of the story- that reality in which the events are presumed to take place.( Plato originally used to refer to the telling, rather than acting, of stories)
- It has been replaced by narrative world and stroryworld
Narrative world and Storyworld
Replacement of diegesis. Both have the advantage of being clearer and unencumbered by another meaning.
Homodiegetic Narration
Narration that comes from a character in the Storyworld
Heterodiegetic and Extradiegetic Narration
Referes to narration that comes from outside the Storyworld
