Narrative Perspectives Flashcards

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1
Q

First Person

A
  • Participating role (although may not fit into the main plot)
  • Reader given specific character’s interpretation of events
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2
Q

Third Person

A
  • External to world of story
  • 3rd person narrator can still have a personality
  • Scene has been processed before it reaches the readers, adding things that aren’t exactly part of the story
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3
Q

Omniscient Narrative Style

A
  • Easiest to follow as not unreliable/biased
  • Narrator is all seeing + all knowing, as if they’re God looking on the world + telling a story about a select few of the world’s inhabitants
  • Reader is given information about a range of characters/situations, so they can understand an event from multiple perspectives
  • Particularly notable in 18th + 19th century novels
  • Modernist literature sought to break free from this to offer a more realist narrative perception
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4
Q

Alternating Narrative Perspective

A

-The narrative perspective changes e.g. 3rd person might become 1st person

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5
Q

Intrusive Narrative Voice

A
  • Authorial voice ‘intrudes’ on events of the narrative, potentially dispelling the illusion that what we’re reading is true
  • Popular until 20th century, until making a comeback in post-modern writers
  • Might include direct address e.g. ‘you’
  • Often expresses their own ideas on what’s taking place in the narrative
  • Can sometimes evaluate characters + actions in the story + give a view about the world in general
  • Establishes a 1:1 relationship between writer + reader; reader becomes the main subject of the author’s attention
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6
Q

Stream of Consciousness

A
  • First used in 20th century in response to growing interest in psychology
  • Tends to use less punctuation + grammatical structure
  • Images + ideas flow + tend to interrupt one another
  • Readers are given the impression of being inside the mind of the voice/character; read what they’re thinking as they’re thinking it
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7
Q

Direct Discourse

A
  • Told by the character
  • e.g. ‘She threw her gloves on the ground, tears welling in her eyes, and said, “This is it, James. You have to choose.”’
  • e.g. ‘She threw her gloves on the ground, tears welling in her eyes, and thought, “This is it, James. He’s going to have to choose.”
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8
Q

Indirect Discourse

A
  • Told by the narrator
  • e.g. ‘She threw her gloves on the ground, tears welling in her eyes, and said that it was time for James to make his decision.’
  • e.g. ‘She threw her gloves on the ground, tears welling in her eyes, and thought that the time had come, that he was going to have to choose.’
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9
Q

Free Indirect Discourse

A
  • 3rd person narrator but the character’s thoughts come out in the narration
  • Narrative voice takes on the voice of the character without saying ‘he said’ etc
  • Narrator becomes a ventriloquist for characters
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10
Q

Focalisation

A
  • Through whose eyes we’re looking
  • Narration takes on the perspective/PoV of a character within the novel
  • Different from free direct discourse as it doesn’t relate to stated speech or thoughts
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