LITERARY NARRATIVE FICTION

Literary narrative fiction literature: art of language kinds of Iiterature: poetry, drama, narrative fiction prose: from Latin prosa or proversa oratio =‘straightforward discourse’ M. Jourdain: I've been speaking in PROSE all along! Moliere ( ), Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme

Narrative account of a sequence of connected events told by a narrator what happened vs how it is told 'story' 'narration' Narration - rearranges the order of events e.g., flashback: historical time vs narrated order - sets up relations between events e.g., cause and effect

Arrangement of events with a particular kind of beginning and ending orientation, closure, coda usually told for a purpose typically about change: situation A changes to situation B lack leads to restoration

Building blocks of narrative types of character (»roles) types of event types of lack and restoration types of getting from beginning to end (How do you know it is the end of the story?)

Gérard Genette’s system Based on the distinction between story and plot (fabula and syuzhet in Russian formalism) - récit (the chronological order of events in a text or narrative) - histoire (the sequence in which events actually occur) - narration (the act of narrating) (Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse, 1972)

The spectrum of fiction fact – fiction – truth? Realism vs romance: a matter of perception vs a matter of vision (2 principal ways fiction can be related to life) HistoryRealismRomanceFantasy

Literary conventions an agreement between artist and audience as to the significance of features appearing in a work of art knowledge of conventions = literary competence narrative: tells of real or imagined events; tells a story fiction: an imagined creation in verse/prose/drama story: imagined events or happenings, involving a conflict plot: arrangement of action → structure

structure structure: connecting elements, repetition, parallelism selection, connection, ordering of information leading to a recognition moving to illuminate the beginning by the ending

Narrator, narration narrator: one who tells a story within/outside the space and time of story Who tells the story? To whom? Why? How? narration: narrative perspective: point of view author ≠ author's persona (mask) ≠ narrator (Samuel Clemens vs Mark Twain)

characters characterization round vs flat characters E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel stereotypes: characters based on conscious or unconscious cultural assumptions that sex, age, ethnic or national identification, occupation, marital status and so on, are predictably accompanied by certain character traits, actions, even values

Literary, narrative, fictional distinct features, do not presuppose each other examplesliterarynarrativefictional +++ Lit. narr. fict Nonlit. nonnarr. nonfiction