The techniques of fiction Flashcards
The techniques of fiction
in her study of Sartre Iris Murdoch has tallked about "the novelist's blessed freedom from rationalism" . what has been discovered is its essential contingency . "Libra" by Delllilo is packed with incidental detail , observations which belong to a total impression of the events but which can not be explainded in terms of any relationship to Kennedy’s assasination Oscar Lewis says in his introduction to "The children of Sanchez" : the independent versions of the same incidents given by various family numbers provide a built-in check upon the reliability of much of the data and thereby offset the subjectivity inherent in a single autobiography Lewis choose to adopt a method of selective revelation "dramatize , dramatize " , said Henry James . the rationalist of anthropology has been stripped away . leaving the reverberant texture of Sanchez family life to speak for itself . this is not to suggest that Lewis has not ordered the experience he presents , but he has ordered it 'novelistically " rather " scientifically " this kind of cross-fertilization between the novel and other disciplines redefines the novlist's proper territory . a characteristic failure of the nineteenth century novel was his inability to transcend his social group and regional locality .Trollope's appaling cartoons of middle-class working characters were symptomatic of this period Practical criticism has encouraged a large number of students to discover the technicalities of both poetry and fiction . when we apply the techniques of Practical criticism to a novel it has only a limited value . they belong to descriptive rather than evaluative criticism in any case . A poem divides naturally into the brief unity of line , image and stanza and Practical criticism concentrates exclusevely on these. A novel divides into most easily into the longer units of the paragraph , the episode and the chapter . our interest is g enerally sustained not by images , and rythmic repetitions, but by the organnization of events in the narrative . the verbal quality of the novel is best described , not in terms of the striking image or occasional distortion of syntax , but by the effect of the overall tone. by modern fiction I mean works published since 1945 by English and American writers who have established their characteristic styles since that date. Three sections : on handling the narrative , on dealing with character , on points of style and language
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chapter 1 : narrative
when a story is told the reader reconstructs past events -placing in a detached perspective . it exists in an ordered sequence , irrelevancies eliminated
in order to involve the reader in a story , the narrator adopts the convention of pretending that things are happening here and now ; imagery and dialogue are made to work before our eyes , a idf no gap of time separated us from the action of the narrative .
owing to the convention of tenses , the reader is held in a flexible relationship with the events of the story ,sometimes involved , sometimes detached . but many novelists have edged their narrative toward one extreme or the other in order to create a special effect . in “The Sot-weed factor “ by john Barth the author forcibly detaches the reader from the story , partly by phrasing it in archaic language , partly by using a past-historic tense . sometimes a third party retells his own account in his own words . sometimes the author appears to be writing autobiographically .
the value of first person testimony is obvious , particularly when the events in the story seem so remote or unlikely that the author feels it necessary to construct the figure of a witness who saw everything at first hand the homely quality of Ellen Dean who narrates most of Wurthering Heights and the first person of narrator of Edgar Allan Poe ‘s “The fall of the House of Usher” act as a useful link between the reader and the character
an intermitent use of the third person in a first person story can effect a degree of detachment . . in Herzog , Saul Bellow sometimes call herzog I , sometimes He . These changes do correspond with emotional movements in the narrative.
only when the author seems to be deliberately manipulating the conventions should we take critical notice . A good deal of recent conventions is obvioulsly written with a view to experimenting with the conventions of narrative , exposing the kind of mechanics of story-telling which we would normally take as granted.
handling of tense and handling of person
most of a passage may be phrased in the “present-habitual “tense of genealized statement in which the past is implicated just as deeply as the immediate present
the ritualized aspects of everyday life afford a way of enabling the past to survive into the present :
“staring and staring into a mirror , it sees many faces within it face - the face of the child , the boy ,the young man , the not-so-young man - all present still preserved like fossils or superimposed layers , and , like fossils , dead .”
George ‘s ambivalent preoccupation with the past is charted exactly by the undertones carried by the use of tense in this passage.
by using the present tense narrative the narrator can not compress and select his material
the use of the third person presents the hero in a detached light
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Point of view :
the narrrator may be a character who stands “on the fringe of events “. his main function is to observe .Nick Carraway in “the Great Gatsby “ or Marlow in “the Heart of darknes” . they are “fringe narrators”
sometimes several exist in a same novel . such is the case of “Wurthering Heights” . Ellen dean , the Housekeeper tells the story to Lockwood . we have to ask ourselves : can we trust them ? Have they any motives for distorting the story ? what is their role in the action ? how does it affect their vision of the events
recent fiction has been affected by the theory of limited point of view because if modern fiction has a commmon theme it is the conflict between the individual sensibility and the alien outside world - with such a subject only one point of view is possible , that of the suffering hero . A change of viewpoint is a lapse into inconsistency which would deflect the reader’s interest from the narrative altogether
as early as 1927 ,E, M , Foster complained about programmatic insistence on a limited point of view in Aspects of the novel : This right to intermittent knowledge … has a paralel in our perception of life … we can enter into people’s mind occasionally but not always … this intermittence lends in the long term variety and color to the experiences we receive
Foster calls this shifting of viewpoint “bouncing “ . he inhabits one character after another . anyone who has read “Howard’s end “ will be familiar with the subtle ambiguities of Foster’s character.
all of Angus Wison ‘s writing is directed towards generating the sense of embarrassment occasioned by the woman’s akward meeting.
consider the way in which Wilson treats DR Lortimer in Anglo-saxon attitudes:
” Rose Lortimer , struggling with weighed-shopping baskets made her immense way among the marble and mosaic of the Corner House , caught a passing view of herself in a mirror and was pleased “
the first half of the sentence presents Rose from a distance . she would hardly be likely to think of herself as “making her immense way “ , and the phrase is obviously coined by an observer of the scene . but by the time Rose has reached the mirror , Wilson is giving her view of things . Wilson adopts temporarily Rose’s point of view by appropriating her own vocabulary and style of expression ; her manner is reflected in the words she uses . “she had always loved artificial flowers”
at the same time her language reveals a degree of naive romanticism . she ‘dreaded to think into what strange realm the poor creature’s mind has strayed “ .
this is where much of the comedy of Wilson’s bounced narrative emerges : we see both characters from the inside , are aware of the trepidation of both of them , and are equally conscious of the fact that neither has a clue as to how the other is thinking . the whole episode is a drama of misunderstanding.
midway through the passage there is a characteristic moment :
“Dr Lortimer’s voice was strangely small coming out of her massive form , like a little girl’s reciting a party piece . its childish effect was greater after Clarissa’s Crane sophisticated , strangled contralto. “
during these two sentences we distanced from the two characters . the effect is that as if the novelist has moved us to some vantage point on the far side of the cafe : the point of view is now independant of characterisation , the writer is speaking for himself and for us . Such intermittent detachment enables us to see the characters as pathetic . Yet the interiorisation of the narrative allows us never to lose sympathy with either character - traditionalism of his technique.
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Dramatized consciousness :
the publication of Huckleberry finn in America in 1885 and of Ulysses in London in 1922 afford two seminal dates for the historian of modern fiction . In both novels the narrative was a dramatization in language of the workings of the central character’s consciousness .
the techniques of “vernacular narrative treat the language dramatically . they catch it in the act of beeing formed
Huck never superimposes an adult logic on his action and rarely presses an interpretation of events on the reader . his narrative dramaically enacts his innocence .Twain’s vernacular narrative cleaves to Huck’s own resources of language
the whole of Molly Bloom’s accumulated experience is available for total recall . neither conventional logic nor notion of time operates in Bloom’s mind . things happpen by random association than by any scheme of causation
a recent vernacular narrative J D Salinger Catcher in the rye bears out this tendency
Herzog is a patchwork quilt of all ideas , memories , speculations that engross the reader during the course of the novel . the consciousness dramatized in the novel is the consciousness of a man of ideas . Bellow’s novel charts every shift and twist of his mind . he skids off the present moment at a tangent . we are given one brief glimpse of what is happening outside while Herzog sits in the train . Herzog’s jumble of ideas is correlated by his jumble of vernacular idioms . a switch of thought entails a switch of language . Herzog’s easy colloquial moralism changes without warning into the stilted formality of the business letter . Herzog is a fragmented man splintered into facets which will not fit into a coherent whole.
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Time :
the flexibility of tempo is one of the novelist’s major instruments
one of the ways in which the narrator can order a story is by varying the proportion of time allotted to a particular incidents
narrative speed is larggely determined by the amount of details . but syntax too has an important part to play.
cause and contingency :
in Jean Paul Sartre La Nausee we have a dialogue between leamas and Roquentin , between the man whose world is bound by an inevitable if incomprehensible logic , and between the man whose life is just a bundle of related coincidences .
contingency is not an illusion , it is perfect gratuitouness . everything is gratuitous , this park , this town , myself.
Henry James demanded that the novelist should practice a technique of continual relevance , introducing nothing in his story that does not advance its logical development . neither Ford nor James faced contingency
the old distinction between the novel of incident and the novel of character is a useful one . the novel of incident traditionally hinges on the causative development of plot , while the novel of character deals typically with the contigencies encountered by the hero.
contemporary novelists , particularly those who have come under the spell of existentialism have made use of both the shandian and the picaresque to come to terms of helpless human lump
in John Barth’s The end of the road , we have a heavy stylized scene between jacob Homer as a victim of chance while the doctor plays the part of cause and logic
the dialogue between them exists almost as a series of philosophical illustrations , but Barth convincingly extends the principle of contingency into the descriptive structure of his narrative.
the particular strength of Barth’s writing lies in the way in wich contingency reasserts itself in Jacob’s narrative . all the time we are involved in the interview in wich logic and cause win outright , we are simultaneously confronted with a world of random sensations and irrelevant speculations . “the besotting particularity of Fiction “ which bothered R L Stevenson , is allowed a farcical scope in The end of the road
“ I made a suppositive gesture , which consisted of a slight outward motion of my lapel-grasping left-hand extending simultaneously the fore and index fingers but not releasing my lapels “
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chapter 2 : character and dialogue
an Oxford or cokney accent may have resonant associations with a particular class or by implication with a particular character- type.
there is a current argument that the novel is dying for want of a firm fabric of social manners speak
in Woman in love DH Lawrrence gives this speech to Birkin :
”right down the slopes of generation- mystic , universal degeneration . there are many stages of pure degradation to go through : agelong . we live on long after our death , and , progressively , in progressive devolution .” the rythms and vocabulary of that speech are poetic , stylized . but Lawrence was reaching toward an operatic where characters are formal mouthpieces for sentiments and ideas larger themselves.
we do not speak as we think . the language we speak is a deceptive index to what we feel.
some of Hemingway’s short stories catch the indirectness of speech . in “Hills Like white elephants” a man and a girl are waiting at a railway station . she is going away to have an abortion . the thing is never mentioned by name and we graduallly infer what is going on.
the writer has to choose between dialogue that conveys a complex argument directly and dialogue that is dramatically accurate.
accuracy for its own sake does not produce fine dialogue
we ask the writer to use dialogue as a medium and not as an end for itself
in the meal scenes in “Goodbye Columbus’ , Roth further emphasizes the alien quality of the characters’ world by refusing to supply us with explanatory detail . The banality of their conversation has to stand on its own and we are immersed in a family of strangers making jokes we don’t altogether understand.
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Characters and manners : the study of culture covers the more ambiguous literary concept of Manners . it should include a relevant distinctive feature of the particular society portrayed in the novel . if a character must assert himself as an individual he mut transcend his culture . conversly , some characters in fiction are so "culture-bound that they never become individuals in their own right . characters may be most subject to their culture when they thought they have reached a pinnacle of individuality. the existence of a body of manners enables the novelist to place his characters in a social setting without telling us any more of the characters . when Henry james begins The Europeans he sketches the refinement of a sophisticated man and woman staying in the best hotel at Boston. it is important that at this stage we see nothing more of the characters than their social milieu . they are generalized figures representative of a class and culture the portrait of a woman is established solely on details of fashion . We are initiated into a cosmopolitan culture of the 1870s. in the Garrick year Margaret Drabble paints an acid portrait of a theatre company in which the actor's tribal behaviour dominates the novel. J D Salinger chronicles the manners of teenagers , college students and the young affluent middlle-class .his novel Catcher in the Rye works as exact registers of the time , catching speech mannerisms . He recreates in his work the surface of campus and appartment life. when contemporary english novelits exploit the manners of our own time , they turn most characteristically toward small-scale institutions with their professional rituals and codes of conduct. in portrait of Liddie from The group by Mc carthy , Libby is cast almost entirely within the mould of her culture . she is a stereotype , romantically committed to the sidelines of litterature , conventionally ambitious. Libbie is a model of social adjustment and a perfect product of her class. Mc carthy wields a double-edged blade when she deals with the Harper's affair . for Libbie as a prototypical middle-brow easily accepts the glamor of this conventionally sophisticated magazine while the rest of her classmates affect to scorn it . Wether their scorn or Libbie's ingenuous reverence is most at fault is a matter of ambiguity. the whole tone of the narration echoes the student idiom of the group . she strikes a consistent tone of nineteen thirties chic using the slang and syntax of fashionable gossip-columns of the period with their racy , if now , faded elegance. figures of speech have a facetious pedantry about them "Lo and behold " the total effect of the language of the passage is to evoke a sense of strained informality . the special adjectives and phrases are an integral part of the group's system of manners; they set the trademark of fashionabilty on whatever they describe. a major aspect of modern culture has been catalogued with deadly accuracy. as a novelist of manners , Miss mc Carthy manages to touch the pulse of the dominant social class of her time.
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Character and symbolism :
Faulkner in Light in August invites us to view his hero as a Christ figure crucified by the vigilance and prejudice of a world he cannot escape.
where christian symbolism is ethically committed , symbolism is derived from classical mythology is “ethically neutral “.
beneath James joyce’s Ulysses runs the subtext of Homer’s Odyssey
Carl jung formulated the concept of “archetypal myth” in which he maintained that images of birth , growth represented by natural figures were historically represented in the man’s mind . the circle . the life-cycle of the plant , the movement of the sea represent in Jungian terms unconscious human urges . the great mythological stories could be explained as expressions of a collective , supra-rational impulse . The resurrection could be identified with pagan rebirth myths.
in the Centaur by Iris murdoch , the question is : does the weight of importance miss Murdoch attaches to her symbolic framework stifle her characters ? do they live as believable people? or as pawns of symbolism ?
one of the fundamental problems of the contemporary writer : how far can he afford to control his characters ?
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character and location:
the visual quality of a passage may extend beyond images . A cinematographic effect is thus achieved
“I saw him lying with his head upon his arm as I often saw him lie at school “
Cinema effects are used to by-pass the lengthy descriptions and discourses .
We are seeing characters and actions ,not only thinking about them
A high proportion of American novelists earned their livings by producing film scripts- Hemingway , Scott Fitzgerald . se also the Dear park ‘ de Norman mailer
The novel of short scenes linked by visual dissolves’ is characteristic of the nineteen-twenties .
Nathanael West’s ‘ the day of the locust ‘ llike USA’ of DOS Passos is a series of short scenes juxtaposed against one another . the location if Hollywood , with its jumble of architectural scenes , the mock-chinese pagodas set against mock-Tudor pagodas. Is used by West to validate his exploration of the artificial lives of the characters.
The consistency of the novel is maintained by the unity of location
The treatment of characters in silent films , where everything has to be sketched in visual terms , to imitate the effects of cinema and bypass the lengthy descriptions and deductions of discursive narrative.
Writers like Theodore Dreiser , William Faulkner , Scott Fitzgerald wrote film scripts and transferred their technical skills to fiction.
“the deer park” by Norman Mailer applied the visual technique of Hollywood
The scene of the tower
Every shift in emotional balance , every change in attitude is corroborated by the tangible world of objects and landscapes.
Character and location are attuned to one another.
The description of the tower sketches what look like a landscape without figures.
But an attentive reading reveals that every detail of the setting illuminates mrs Armitage’s state of mind . the sense of height , of being above the world , of enclosure within bricks and glass, of the obscurity enforced by mist and rain , and the apparent dislocation from the ground and drifting birds offer an exact image of human dislocation.
She is not painting a “generalized’ mood picture so much as giving us a precise rendering of a real place with real details.
The crispness of her description of the birds , ‘like burnt paper ‘ allow us no doubts as to the actuality of the tower.
The speculative tone of most of the second paragraph stays anchored to the reality of the physical presence of the tower .
”the high tower ,rising like a lighthouse in a sea of mist , was accessible to reality.”
“in that statement the two tones of abstract speculation and litteral description , subtly fuse .
By the third paragraph the theme of speculation has been stretched to include human identity as well as space and time
Mrs Armitage is cut off from a sense of the “actuality of people’s lives “
The tall , proud tower and the crushed life inside it make a dissonant pair .
Interplay between character and setting .
How successfully does mrs Mortimer correlate the visual and metaphysical elements in this scene ?
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Character and submerged form
A freewheeling hero
The matchmaking from “The magic barrel “ from Malamud
Malamud has erected a moral framework in the form of a fairy tale which constrasts with the actual working out of the story.
Ideal vs real
“his voice , his lips , his wisp of beard , his bony fingers were animated , but give him a moment of repose and his mild blue eyes revealed a depth of sadness …
Formal , mannered tone of a storyteller
That address to the reader in the subjunctive (‘give him a moment of repose’) belongs properly to an oral rather than written tradition of narrative .
Technique of stylization : a cartoon figure
Realistic vein
Further the fairy tale texture is overlaid by realism
”he now observed the round white moon as it moved through a cloud menagerie ‘
The fanciful surrealist image of the cloud lifts the narrative straight out of gutter realism
The pragmatism of Leo’s motive is at odds with the romantic fantasy of the lonely-prince situation.
Money and family connections are foremost.
Malamud’s realism achieves point and perspective is juxtaposed against romantic setting.
The two main literary styles correlate with the real subject of the story . romance and expediency are twin contrasted ways of marriage.
Malamud has intricately balanced his two forms against one another .
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chap 3 : Style and fiction
The language of fiction
If we are to describe the dialogue :
Mimetic function
Its place within the internal structure of the work ( what function does it perform in the narrative ? )
The language of the novel is dynamic in structure , geared toward the development of the narrative.
Can one discern a personal mannerism or traditional rhetorical system at work in the text ?
Is there any tendency for the language ( by the use of deviant structures , opposition or the use of repetition ) to draw our attention to the text as linguistic object ?
A sequence of deliberate clichés
Debased rhetorical system : balanced antithesis , platitudinous metaphors , (‘a hush fell over the crowd “)
His imagination finds its deepest expression in clichés . he is defined by his tawdry provincial surroundings .
Elegiac tone
Social overtone of langage
Registers in the language of fiction
The novelist may borrow the language of any situation , however formal or informal and use it in fiction.
The language register of business stands for a cheapening of the quality of private life.
A phrase like “marketing and media’ has limited implication in ordinary usage but carry its full range of associations in literature , usually taboo .
Much of Richardson’s style lies in its capacity to imitate the tone and style of his characters.
Writers can shift from grandiose heroic style to colloquial register.
His language is deliberately flat to the point of banality, catching the inflexions of the speaking voice .
“the awful sense that they are not quite the same “
And our school chum killed in a distant war
Is not surprised to see us at his door “
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Etude de la nouvelle:
La nouvelle est un reflet plus ou moins deforme de son eoque
Toute analyse littteraire ne peut se passer d’outils et fit appel a des concepts .
Pour reprendre les trois niveaux d’un texte litteraire:
Ces sgnifiants sont
-d’ordre linguistique –paradigme / syntagme; enonce /enonciation; signifiant/signifie;
/ apparition de la linguistique de l’enonciation /de la pragmatique des textes
-d’ordre narratologique: focalisation , discours; recit /histoire; temps du recit temps de l,histoire
-d’ordre poetique: travail du signifiant , psychanalyse
Il s’agit de forger sa propre methodologie a partir de theories existantes:
Il n’est plus possible de croire a l’a-theorisme de la critique littraire qui elle aussi a subi la rupture epistemologique , caracteristique de la modernite
Le lecteur critique soumet ses concepts a l’epreuve du texte et non l’inverse; par exemple il ne s’agit pas de montrer ce qu’est un narrateur heterodiegetique mais de voir quelle est la strategie du texte
Eviter la derive mecaniste
Une bonne explication doit rendre compte de la specificite du texte sans imposer une grille toute faite;
Pour cela faire fonctionner une ou seux methodologies en tablant sur le bon sens du lecteur
La specificite du texte Au cœur de la nouvelle se trouve une tension Le sujet ecrivain force le langage a dire plus L’axe syntagmatique est soumis a davantage de pression que l’axe paradigmatique Le but du texte de la nouvelle est moins de representer la realite que de créer une realite d’un autre ordre Le commentaire doit rendre compte de la facon dont le travail du signifiant intervient dans la representation de la realite Role d’artefact du texte litteraire Le texte ltteraire deconstruit la langue de la communication pour produire u sens cache Jacques Derrida definit bien le mode definition du texte; un texte n’est un texte que s’il cache au premier regard la loi de sa composition , et la regle du jeu . Strategie d’indirection , de detournement C’est Alain Robbe-Grillet qui apporte des elements de reponse a cette question Pour lui «un texte n’est pas le devoilement progressif d’une verite . c’est l’ouverture d’une liberte «. Pour roland Barthes le texte est une structure dynamique qui echappe a la cloture du sens . le texte ne devoile pas une verite exterieure L’auteur profite de ‘infinie combinatoire des elements de la langue . la narrativite , le lexique L’autonomie relative du signifiant garantit une autonomie au texte . La liberte du lecteur consiste a choisir parmi la pluralite des modalites du travail du signifiant celles qui lui parlent le plus pour batir son commmentaire Montrer dans le commentaire comment le travail du signifiant entre en conflit avec la linearite du discours du recit Le lecteur se pose la question de la production du sens et est libere des pistes interpretatives comme dans le roman policier . [ Un texte est un artefact qui fonctionne a trois niveaux: linguistique , narratif et poetique Le sujet utilise des modalites complexes d’ecriture , d’encodage qui en determinent la valeur litteraire , artistique ou esthetique Le sujet laisse libre a l’autonomie de la langue dans son propre discours afin de produire un supplement de sens dont il ne s’apercevoit pas lui-meme les implications Le texte de fiction produit par retardement des effets de sens Le texte litteraire produit lui-meme une illusion de realite –«l’illusion referentielle –probleme de la «mimesis -l’univers de la diegese, ( de l’histoire , des personnages ) -l’univers de la realite – le hors-texte Le but est de créer une realite d’un autre ordre Le commentaire doit rendre compte du travail signifiant ( sauf les textes post-modernes qui mettent en avant la dimension artificielle du language ) La partie diegetique peut etre traite dans la partie consacree au contenu thematique Deconstruction de la langue litteraire au profit d’une construction plus litteraire , plus dense ]
Pour Roland Barthes le texte est une structure dynamique qui echappe a la cloture du sens .
Commenter une nouvelle revient a rendre compte de l’experience du poetique: travail du signifiant , donc du paradigme .-ce n’est pas autre chose que ce qui rentre en conflit avec la linearite du discours (fonde sur le syntagme.
Palimpseste: fonctionnement inconscient du texte
le fonctionnement linguistique
La signifiance permet l’existence du texte litteraire – un enonce qui ne s’arrete pas au sens litteral
La signifiance est le travail du signifiant –qui est une sorte d’encodage complexe qui utilise les proprites multiples du language afin dde produire une pluralite de sens avec un minimum de signifiant’
Le principe asssociatif est a l’œuvre dans le cas du paradigme
Le fonctionnement poetique fait rejaillir d’autres possibillites de sens qui fait paser du litteral au litteraire
Le fonctionnement narratif
Il fait appel a des strategies narratives
On appelle par la les diverses modalites d’encodage – narratif , cette fois –au moyen desquelles l’instance narrative choisit de rapporter les evenements de la diegese , ou dfe construire son recit .
Il faut abandonner le vieux mythe de l’inspiration . selon Vladimir Propp (1895-1970)
Choisir parmi les mulyiples combinatoires possibles:
La progression narrative s’opere a partir de certains choix –afin de determiner qui voit , qui parle , dans quel ordre les evenements sont racontes
Il convient de distinguer deux notions litteraires qui relevent de la nature du texte litteraire:
- l’oppsition entre histoire et discours
-Entre enonce et enonciation
La distinction entre signifiant et signifie correspond la distinction entre histoire et discours
Enonce = structure linguistique finie - par exemple le texte de la nouvelle .
Enonciation = acte par lequel l’auteur construit cet enonce . il est d’ordre pragmatique . c’est l’acte d’actualisation d’un enonce
Narrateur homodiegetique vs heterodiegetique
Dans la nouvelle «i am rather an elderly man»est une phrase simple ( sujet + verbe + copule + attribut ) tandis que l’instance narrative I qui prend la parole pour la proferer produit un act d’enonciation .
Le terme diegese releve du cadre spatio-temporel comme ce qui releve de l’action
Ce qui mediatise le rapport entre histoire et discours du recit n’est autre que l’acte d’enonciation , qui prend la forme de narration
Le debut in media res n’est autre que la marque du debut du recit ( discours ) alors que l’histoire elle a déjà commence . le recit peut commencer alors que l’incident a déjà eu lieu
Ce que le critique appelle une fin ouverte est une facon de dire que le discours du recit se termine tandis que l’histoire continue
C’est dans le domaine de la temporalite que l’articulation des trois nivewaux textuels: histoire , discours du recit et narration permet des jeux strategiques:
A la suite de Gerard Genette , distinguer story time ou temps de la diegese et discourse time qui correspond a l’espace textuel
-analepse et prolepse
Discordances en matiere de duree: pause , ellipse , sommaire .
Pas d’acceleration ou ralentissement du recit
Dans la pause le temps de l’histoire est inferieur au temps du recit alors que dans le summary c’est l’inverse
Dans l’ellipse le temps est egal a zero
Distinguer aussi:
Recit singulatif
Recit itratif
Une des modalites importantes de la strategie narrative est la focalistion
Si c’est l’instance narrative qui parle , qui narrre , elle peut adopter le point de vue du personnage –sans que le discours du recit le marque
Certaines formes du discours narratif brouille les reperes enonciatifs:
Cas du discours Discours indirect libre qui est un procede litteraire: il consiste a rendre compte des discours d’un personnage dans son propre idiolecte tou en adoptant la fiction d’un narrateur a la troisieme personne
La voix e la doxa: le discours dominant de la societe
Un aspect important de la strategie narrative est la constuction du personnage
Role des actants: adjuvant … etc
Mais le reperage actanciel ne constitue pas un commentaire litteraire – c’est ramener a une matrice unique .
Le commentaire peut faire apparaitre les aspects thematiques puis les diverses modalites mises en jeu qui peuvent etre d’ordre moral ,social , politique , religieux , psychanalytique , esthetique , metalitteraire
Saisir jeux de mots , allusions , refernces intellectuelles , references a des textes canoniques de4 la littérature anglo-saxonne
Le schema actanciel se decline suivant les motifs narratifs recurrents parmi lesquels on peu t distinguer
-le parcours initiatique
-la circularite
-le retour au point de depart
Qui peuvent conduire a des situations classiques de revelation ( climax –anticlimax )
-l’initiation , la naissance et la renaissance
Ce sont la des modalites narratives frequentes
Le texte est un phenomene de textualite
-L’etoilement du sens: indice de litteralite
Presentation materielle du signifiant:
Alternance de passages narratifs et de passages dialogues: tout decoupage du texte est déjà une mise en perspective; une contrainte imposee au lecteur
Fragmentation du recit peut representer metaphoriquement l’eclatement d’une vie
Retour au passe par la mémoire; anamnese
Le signifiant dans sa materialite graphique et sonore peut créer des effets de sens: paronomase –fonction poetique: recherche du plaisir
Les reseaux isotopiques
L’isotopie est un champ lexical au second degre , ce qui federe l’ensemble des signifiants en un un theme unique; par exemple le theme de la naissance
Role de l’incipit « a slip-up» peut inviter a une lecture freudienne
Les figure de style:
Modalite du double jeu: ex: ironie
Metaphore et metonymie:
Intetextualite et reflexivite
L’onomastique
La notion de reflexivite signifie que le texte fait refence a ses propres modalites d’ecriture
Comment lire?
Lire c’est reperer tous les effets de sens produits par le travail du signifiant ( jeux de mots , langage code , allusions , images , citation ) pour les rattacher a une idee directrice
Le but de cette ide directrice est de construire une hypothese interpretative appelle probblematique
Faire apparaitre les reseaux isotopiques qui structurent le texte pour lui donner une cohernce isotopique autre que celle du semantisme de surface: le litteral .
C’est en d’autres termes rendre compte de tous les exemples de polysemie qui structurent le texte .
-Une lecture pour les strategies narratives
- une lecture pour le reperage des isotopies
-une autre pour les figures de style
Il convient de pallier la part contraignante a la lecture de type mecaniste en lui menageant un espace de liberte , d’ouverture interpretative
Le fonctionnement psychanalytique du texte
L’articulation des structures langagieres ala structure narrative produit des effets de sens symboliques qui constituent la litterarite sym bolique
Le but de l’œuvre n’est pas de produire un message ideologique , mais de communiquer une emotion esthetique
La notion d’inconscient du texte:
Remise en question de la notion de maitrise de l’ecriture .
Cela revient a placer l’auteur hors du jeu de la construction du sens et oblige le lecteur a ne se fier qu’aux reseaux d’isotopies qui structurent le texte
Pour Lacan , l’inconscienr est ce chapitre du moi qui est censure
L’ecriture du texte est un processus dynamique: lieu ou s’entrecroisent le paradigmatique et le syntagmatique
Themes de la psychanalyse: Castration Fantasme Narcissisme Compulsion de repetition Narcissisme Phallus L’imaginaire Stade du miroir Travail du deuil surmoi
Style
style as outlook
the writer betrays by his style his own ultimate concern
to be conscious is to know something . language is the medium by which we are conscious
writing as discovery , a way of knowing
I ) style as outlook
style and audience
writing is a social act
how to relate to your audience
detailing :
when you generalize from a body of details , you are using what logicians call induction
thus you survey the lawn and note its details : iris , peonies , poppies , myrtle , verbena , roses ; then you frame a generalization : the impression of loveliness and amplitude
writers have mastered the inductive process : they don’t tell us that their characters are virtuous or wicked . they present the actual living details which present the character’s nature.
cohering :
young children are said to experience life as a series of unconnected events ; only the moment counts
naive structures :
the hedges and walls block off visitors ; they would give way to long ascending drives and walks ; the arching elms would frame both temple and sky.
original :
because the hedges and walls block off visitors , they would give way to long ascending drives and walks under the arching elms which would frame both temple and sky
anything you do in linking your material enters into this element of coherence
selective principles at work in a decription to convey a feeling
Sinclair contrasts the shockng violence oof catle slaughter wits systematic procedure
other example : police subduing a mob
abstract impersonality which creates the tone of understatement ( man , men ) in opposition to more specific , more dramatic treatment .
parody uses any device to throw into relief tthe target qualities of the original.
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Description :
Time order
space order
a special use of the comparison pattern is the analogy whereby an event is likened to a more familiar , more vivid one.
thus the flood could be dramatized as monster running amok down the valley
the contrast pattern can develop two opposing impressions of an event.
expansion.
it opens with a general statement then provides amplifying particulars
coherence and non-coherence
the stream of consciousness fragment
the relation of message and audience is a dynamic one : it can shift
cant vocabulary : paroles creuses : “sincerity” , “uniquely her own” , “awareness” , “inner peace” and so forth :
here the language conveys fake sentimentality
the writer who deals in such signals as the real thing should be urged to practice discrimination which can open their language to powerful feeling
stock characters ( often called stereotypes) often constitute a kind of shorthand for bypassing the complexities of personality : minorities , family life
purpose : satirize common foibles , to help define the central character
a utility vcabulary of superlatives can be tapped to boost the general assertiveness.
ironic assertion :
the sentimentalist over-urges the reader to feel emotion
many good writers simply alllow the reader , without urging to infer emotion from detail carefully choosen
the ironist counter-urges in such a way as to draw the reader into active collaboration toward the desired response.
ironic assertion:
sentimental:
the departure of his only sweet Birdene left Chauncey in aching desolation . he wept bitter salt tears throughout the dull harassing duties of each day
note the assertive language (“aching desolation” , “dull harassing duties”) and the stock romantic detail (“bitter salt tears”)
ironic :
Birdene’s departure was troublesome enough , but Chauncey thanked the heaven a hundred times daily that he also had duties that kept him from thinking him.
This version says one thing while actually it says the opposite
Birdene’s departure is a mere mishap
Apparently Chauncey is happy but actually he is wretched
Irony : assertion pointing in one direction together with some signal to the reader that the real sense lies in another . thanks to the tip-off , the reader becomes the writer’s partner.
The truth of an assertion runs counter to its appearance.
Another example :
“Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone may be looking” Mencken
The tip-off is the sudden collapse of tone into the vulgar consideration that “someone may be looking “
The moral assertion is based on grubby principles
The writer can use irony as a sustained strategy of indirect attack
The finest irony is plausible and coherent at surface level
Some disparity enough to ignite and feed the reader’s suspicions of a second level of meaning.
The disparity may occur between tone and subject.
“ I was anxious to see the great men of Europe ; for I have read in the works of many philosophers , that all animals degenerated in America , and man among the number… in this idea I was confirmed , by observing the comparative importance and swelling magntitude of many English travelers , among us , who , I was assured , were very little people in their country.
The real theme that –that English travelers are often inflated with conceit
Suspicion is awakened – the signal comes in strong with Irving’s citing “observing the comparative importance and swelling magntitude of many English travelers , among us , who , I was assured , were very little people in their country”
The real thing that English travelers are often inflated with conceit fits the signal more clearly than the strained notion of the New world deteroriation.
Dramatic irony
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how to write fiction
start with what comes to mind first
start putting one after another and keep going
the secret of good writing is rewriting
listing
asking questions
CHAPTER 1 : how to shape yor ideas into effective paragraphs :
one indispensable quality is substance : it must hold the reader’s attention
the topic sentence is the first sentence of the paragraph : you must then give specific evidence to support your idea , and then offer a related idea ( it may be the contrary ) . the development is from the general to the particular , then to the general
the topical sentence can also be at the end of the paragraph as a way of conclusion
the parts of a paragraph must fit together
if it is describing a place , it can move from a general view to significant details , or from immediately striking details to some less obvious , perhaps more important ones .it may move from near to far or from far to near
if it is explaining it can move from cause to effect , or from past to present
if it is arguing it can move from a conclusion to a supprting evidence , or it may give for instance an anecdote that illustrates the argument
another main point is coherence ; it can be achieved by repeating key words
because transitions establish connections between points , they contribute to coherence . here are some of the most common transititional words . they are cues that alert the reader to what follows
1 amplification and likeness
similarly , likewise , and also , again , in addition , furthermore , morever , finally
2 emphasis
chiefly , equally , indeed
3 Contrast or concession
on the other hand , by contrast , however , still , doubtless , granted that , conversely , admittedly
4 Consequence
as a result , hence
5 restatement
in short , that is , in other words
6 Conclusion
finally , therefore , thus
the opening paragraph
one such paragraph moves from a rather broad view to a narrower one , a common version offers some background and concludes wit the subject at hand
the concluding paragrqph
try to say something interesting
it rounds out the previous discussion with a few sentences that summarize , but it also draws an inference that has not previously been expressed . to draw an inference is to see the previous material in a fresh perspective
a good concluding paragraph closes the issue while enriching it
end from some idea at the begining of your essay and bring it full circle
end with an allusion , say , to a mythological figure , or event , putting our topic in a larger framework
chapter 2 : fine-tuning sentences :
A ) revising for conciseness
wordy :
however it must be remembered that Ruth’s marriage could have positive effects on Noami’s situation
concise :
Ruth’s marriage , however will also provide security for Noami
for the vague “positive effects” , and “situation” , specific words communicating a precise point have been substituted.
wordy “
the economic situation of Miss Moody was also a crucial factor in the formation of her character
concise :
Anne Moody’s poverty also helped to form her character
words like : quite , rather , completely , definitely and so on can be struck from a sentence without loss :
it was a rather{ fatuous} statement
both films deal with disasters {virtually} beyond our control
avoid using intensifiers with unique
empty conclusions :
in both Orwell’s and Baldwin’s essays the feeling of white supremacy is important .( why is white supremacy important ?)
concise :
both Orwell and Baldwin trace the insidious consequences of white supremacy
wordy :
the scene is taking place at night before the Capitol
concise :
the scene takes place at night before the Capitol
the rule is , whenever you can , replace a form of the verb to be with a stronger verb :
To be : stronger verb :
is taking take
are indications indicate
is reflective of reflects
redudancy :
in “Araby” , the boy feels alienated { emotionally }
alleged suspects
emotions and feelings
negative constructions are sometimes wordy and pretentious
housing for married students is not unworthy of consideration
housing for married students is worth considering
avoid subordination
wordy :
George Orwell is the pen name of Eric Blair who was an english writer
concise :
George Orwell is the pen name of Eric Blair , an english writer
they are seated at a table which is covered with a patched and tattered cloth
concis:
they are seated at a tale covered with a patched and tattered cloth
B ) revising for clarity :
connotation :
avoid cliche such as ivory tower
finally the long-awaited day arrived
first and foremost
the acid test
slowly but surely
incoherence :
Ruth’s devotion to Noami is rewarded by marrying Boz ( does devotion marry Boz)
Ruth’s marriage to Boz rewards her devotion
misplace modifiers :
put it near
Orwell shot the elephant under pressured circumstance
Orwell , under pressure , shot the elephant
reference of pronouns :
when sheriff Johnson was on a horse , he was a big man
when he was on a horse sheriff johnson was a big man
ambiguous references of pronouns :
her mother died when she was eighteen
general rule : put togeter what belongs together
Daru learned that he must take an arab to hail against his will
Daru learned ,against his will , that he must take an arab to hail
words like surely , it is noteworthy may become habitual . if they don’t help your readers to follow your thoughts , they are prose additives
clarity and sentence structure :
make the structure of your sentence reflect the structure of your thought :
parallel
i will accept if nominated , and serve if elected
fascist art glorifies slander . it exalts mindlessness , it glamorizes death.
C ) revising fo emphasis :
a word or a phrase may be emphasized if it appears at an unusual place.
the end is usually more emphatic :
the essay is brief but informative
the essay is informative but brief
the rule : it really makes sense to put the important point near the end lest the sentence becomes anticlimatic .
although i could not read its six hundred pages , i never willingly put it down
i never willingly put it down although i could not read its six hundred pages
the second sentence straggles away from the real point - that the book was interesting.
anticlimactic :
besides not owning themselves , women also could not own property
women could not own property , in fact they did not own themselves
the common anticlimaxes are produced by weak qualifiers put beside an interesting statement in my opinion , it seems to me , in general the rule :
try to bury dull but necessry qualifiers in the middle of the sentence :
anticlimactic :
poodles are smart but they are no smarter than pigs , i have read
emphasis
poodles are smart but , i have read , they are no smarter than pigs
subordination :
make sure that the less important element is subordinated to the more important
Theo provided money and Van Gogh painted at Arles
the two clauses are of equal importance
if the author had wanted to emphasize Theo , and to deemphasize Van Gogh , he might have written :
while Van Gogh painted at Arles ,Theo provided the money
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