Narrative

Question 1

Conventions of narrative realism

Answer 1

Events are arranged chronologically
Complex, rounded characters that develop
A narrator
Ending draws various strands together, usually through coincidence
Events are included on the basis of their relevance to plot development.
‘Realist operators’ excessive and non-necessary use of detailed description to produce reality effect

Question 2

Narrative content

Answer 2

A collection of representative events (including participants in events and circumstances of events).

Question 3

Narrative form

Answer 3

The way in which narrative vents are represented through a particular narrative medium

Question 4

Content order

Answer 4

Chronological order of events (the story itself)

Question 5

Form order

Answer 5

The order in which the narrative presents events (discourse)

Question 6

What kind of effects can a mismatch between content and form order create?

Answer 6

Enigmas, suspense.

Question 7

What effect does describing minor events in detail have?

Answer 7

Slows the narrative

Question 8

What effect does the condensed treatment of major events have?

Answer 8

Accelerates the narrative

Question 9

Narrative coherence

Answer 9

Recognition that we are being told one unified story

Question 10

Why is content less coherent than form?

Answer 10

Because it is form that organizes content into a single, coherent thing, with start and finish, through process if selection and ordering.

Question 11

Focalizer

Answer 11

Character from whose perspective events are told.

Question 12

What effect can switching narrative pov have?

Answer 12

Causes uncertainty about content because it alters

Question 13

Typicality

Answer 13

A formal characterstic

Question 14

Motif

Answer 14

Typical event in a narrative

Question 15

What narrative arc does the narrative proper undergo?

Answer 15

Movement from some form of lack to resolution and a form of closure.

Question 16

Orientation

Answer 16

Setting the scene

Question 17

Entry strategies

Answer 17

Setting the leading idea of a narrative

Question 18

Exit strategies

Answer 18

Ending a text once a lack has been resolved.

Question 19

What does Structuralism propose composes a narrative?

Answer 19

Story (histoire) - content, event, characters, setting. What is communicated

Discourse (means by which such content communicated) How it’s communicated

Question 20

What does Aristotle propose composes a narrative?

Answer 20

Praxis (Imitation of real world actions) forms logos (an argument), from which are selected/rearranged the units that form the plot (mythos).

Question 21

What does Russian formalism propose composes a narrative?

Answer 21

Fabula (fable - basic story to be related, what’s happened).
Sjuzet (plot - story as actually told by linking events together, how reader becomes aware of what happened, the order of appearance).

Question 22

Kernel

Answer 22

Major events in terms of a narrative’s logic of hierarchy - advances a plot by raising or satisfying questions.
Advances action by opening alternative

Question 23

Satellite

Answer 23

Minor events that can be omitted without disturbing logic of plot, serve to flesh out kernel

Question 24

Motifs

Answer 24

Typical events such as a murder or marriage

Question 25

Narrative proper

Answer 25

Movement from lack to resolution

Question 26

Orientation

Answer 26

Setting the scene

Question 27

Focalization

Answer 27

The way the text represents relationship between who experiences and what's experienced

Question 28

Focalizer

Answer 28

Who experiences

Question 29

Focalized

Answer 29

What's experienced

Question 30

External focalization

Answer 30

anonymous outside voice

Question 31

Character focalization

Answer 31

Phenomena experienced by character

Question 32

Free direct speech

Answer 32

Litte intrusion by narrator, no 'he said'

Question 33

Direct speech

Answer 33

Quotation marks and reporting clause.

Question 34

Indirect speech

Answer 34

No quotation marks, second person pronouns, past tense, narrative voice more dominant

Question 35

Free indirect speech

Answer 35

Part direct, part indirect with suppression of distinguishing details, making it difficult to distinguish between voice of narrator and character.

Question 36

What are the two traditional concepts of realism?

Answer 36

Either direct imitation of reality or mimesis (reconstruction of facts of reality)

Question 37

Give some examples of realist conventions

Answer 37

``` Focus on 'ordinary life' and the complexity of normal people. Non-self-reflexive language Reliable, omniscient narrator Roughly chronological Narrative closure ```

Question 38

What did Lodge propose was the reason that texts were realist?

Answer 38

Their conventions resemble non-fiction

Question 39

How is the reality effect achieved?

Answer 39

Use of excessive, non-necessary information

Question 40

What are non-realist texts?

Answer 40

Texts that play with realist conventions in order to challenge the traditional notion of what realism is

Question 41

Surface structure

Answer 41

Abstract formulation of organization of the observable sentence (what the sentence looks like)

Question 42

Deep Structure

Answer 42

What the sentence means

Question 43

Give examples of two models of deep structure

Answer 43

Levi-Strauss - structure that underlies every myth is a four-term homology, correlating one pair of opposed themes to another. Greimas - Contradictories and contraries

Question 44

Outline Greimas' model of deep structure

Answer 44

Contradictoires, one proposition negates the other, cannot both be true and cannot both be false, mutually exclusive and exhaustive (e.g. white v non-white) Contraries, cannot both be true, but might both be false, mutually exclusive but not exhaustive (e.g. white v black)

Question 45

Event-labelling (proairetic)

Answer 45

Reader amasses certain data under generic titles for actions and this title embodies the sequence (form of paraphrase that enables tangibility of story).

Question 46

Non-uniform labelling

Answer 46

Labels given to actions can change and be labelled in various ways.

Question 47

Narrative propositions

Answer 47

Paraphrasing events/actions as a simple sentence, rather than a single word as in 'event-labelling'.

Question 48

Catalyst

Answer 48

Expand, amplify or delays kernel (progression of plot)

Question 49

Give Prince's three principles of organization

Answer 49

Temporal succession, causality and inversion (or closure based on symmetry or balance).

Question 50

For Propp, what is the 'constant element' in a narrative?

Answer 50

'Function' (an act of character, defined from point of view of its significance for course of the action - function may remain constant even when identity of performer changes). Study of what's done should precede questions of who or how it's done

Question 51

According to Bremond, every three functions combine to punctuate which three stages?

Answer 51

Possibility, process and outcome (each function opens two alternatives).

Question 52

According to Bremond, all macro-sequences are either one of two processes, what are they?

Answer 52

Improvement or deterioration.