Narratology 2

Question 1

What defines the discourse?

Answer 1

Discourse = narrative situations + voice and focalization + time

Question 2

What defines the Narrative Situations?

Answer 2

• two different approaches to analyzing narrative situations:
  ° Franz K. Stanzel “Typische Formen des Romans”, Göttingen, 1964
  ° Gerad Genette “Die Erzählung”, München: UTB, 1984

Stanzel: Narrative Situations:
= authorial narrator (auktorialer Erzähler); first-person narrator (Ich-Erzähler); figural narrative situation (personale Erzählsituation)
- authorial narrator:
° “offers a godlike, panoramic view from an Olympic position outside + above the story”
° “authorial narrator mediates between the world of the character + that of the reader, creating an illusion of a fictional world but also breaking it by intrusive comments + reader addresses”
° being omniscient + omnipresent, the authorial narrator can read various characters’ thoughts + situation can therefore be seen as an imitation of the divine perspective on the human world
- first-person narrator:
° is part of the narrated world + involved in the events either as a protagonist or a character
° has limited access, has no insight into other characters’ thoughts + feelings
° sometimes there’s a temporal distance between narrated events + narration
° first-person narrator = experiencingI I or narrating I
° first-person narrator = I-as-protagonist or I-as-witness
- figural narrative situation:
° is a character’s perspective
° “readers get the impression that they share the thoughts, feelings + perceptions of a character, who serves as a (subjective) reflecter of the fictional world”
° we see the world trough the eyes of a character
° one or more characters of the narration are used as reflector figures the events are presented as experienced

Question 3

Genette: Voice and Focalization

Answer 3

• tried to clarify Stanzel’s terminology by distinguishing between narration + focalization
• wandet to distinguish between narrator + those figures from whose perspective the fictional world is presented
• distinction between “who narrates or speaks” + “who sees”
• “Who speaks” refers to the narrating subject
• Who sees” refers to the question of the perspective from which the fictional events are presented
• -> narrative situation = voice + focalization

Question 4

Voice vs. Focalization

Answer 4

• narrator + the act of focalization perform different functions: narrating and perceiving
• narrator gives a linguistic account of a fictional world
• focalizer, who corresponds to what Stanzel called reflector, “functions as a psychological center of orientation trough whose perceptions + consciousness the fictional events are filtered”

Question 5

Extra- vs. Intradiegetic narrator

Answer 5

extradiegetic narrator:
- located at the level of narrative transmission + together with the fictive addressee constitute the narrative process –> they, in other words, narrate the frame narrative (Rahmenerzählung)

intradiegetic narrators:
- part of the narrated world + are located at the level of the story –> they tell the embedded story (Binnenerzählung) within the frame story told by the extradiegetic narrator

Question 6

Hetero- vs. Homodiegentic narrator

Answer 6

heterodiegetic narrator:
- don’t belong to the world of the characters

homodiegetic narrator:
- when the narrator appears within the world of characters

Question 7

homo- vs. autodiegetic narrator

Answer 7

= “a homodiegetic who is identical with the main protagonist + narrator his or her own life story, instead of just being an observer or witness, is known as an autodiegetic narrator”

Question 8

overt vs. covert narrator

Answer 8

= narrating instances can also be differentiated according to how explicity they appear in a narrative text as a speaker

overt narrator:
- appears as an individualized persona to which the reader is encouraged to attitude personal characteristics + value judgements

covert narrator:
- is anonymous + the reader gains very little information

Question 9

unreliable narrator

Answer 9

signs for an unreliable narrator:

• contrasting versions of the same event
• discrepancies between the statements + actions of the narrator
• contradictions between the narrator’s self-characterization + how other characters see him or her
• subjective comments, insistence of the narrator on his credibility
• verbal tics, memory lapses