3.29.2006
Story and Discourse (Narrative)
Title
Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978.
Field
Narrative
Summary
Can I just reproduce the comprehensive diagram from the end of the book? No? Ok, fine. Chatman is interested in the form of narrative - this is his way of going about answering the question, What is Narrative? Also, he aims at a structure that might accomodate a wide swath of cases. He is deeply influenced by Genette, Barthes and of course, Aristotle. He is a structuralist. Ok then. So following Aristotle, all narratives must have a structure that invokes wholeness, transformation and self-regulation - this is how stuff makes sense to us, yeah? "Clearly narrative is a whole because it is constituted of elements - events and existents - that differ from what they constitute..self-regulation means the structure maintains and closes itself...the process by which a narrative event is expressed is its 'transformation'"(21) Narratives structures are semiotic - narrative signifieds are event, character and detail of setting. Narrative can never be complete (it can't be wholy accurate mimesis because the amount of stuff you'd have to imitate is infinite) Ok so Narrative is divided into two categories, Story and Discourse. Let's begin with Story (since Chatman does). Story - "the content or chain of events...plus existents." (19) This is made up of events which are either acts or happenings - changes of state. Convention is important in understanding this - versimillitude, motivation, etc. dictate how acts may follow one another to make a plot of a story - making it a chain of events, right? So then there is a hierarchy to these events - they are either big deals (kernels) or little deals (satellites). The situation of kernels and satelites dictates stuff like suspense and surprise, etc. Ok, also there is the issue of time. There is the time of the reader - discourse-time, and the time as it is unfolding in the plot - story-time. Chatman goes off of Genette's time analysis here and distinguishes the three categories that govern time in narrative as order, duration and frequency. Characters also have their own versions of time - character-NOW (the time the character is in the present of) and narrator-NOW (the moment of the story telling). This is all microstructure of narrative, but as for macrostructure, the general designs of plots as they stand now, well, it doesn't seem like Chatman is all in for it: "Perhaps the first observation to make about such taxonomies is that they rest on unacknowledged cultural presuppositions." (88) This is why he prefers the formal considerations of structuralism. So besides plot there were also existents to consider. The first one to consider is Story-space, easy in film, a bit harder in verbal narrative, where the reader must create it in the imagination through prompts from the narration. Then we have character, which Chatman believes has gotten a short shrift in narrative theory up until now.They are not secondary to the plot, or merely conjured in service of it, and they are open constructs, filled in by the reader and off the page. Characters have traits, characteristics that exist over the time of the narrative. "The setting 'sets a character off' in the usual figurative sense of te expression; it is the place and collection of objects 'against which' his actions and passions appropriately emerge."(139)
Ok now moving on to discourse, "the expression plane [of narrative which]...is a set of narrative statements." (146) I'm going to fake the diagram that Chatman produces to relation of reader, narrator, author, etc.
Real Author->[Implied Author->(Narrator)->(Narratee)->Implied Reader]->Real Reader. We need to realize this complication to discuss point of view and narrational strategy (the focus of the rest of the book). "The crucial difference between 'point of view' and narrative voice: point of view is the physical place or ideological situation or practical live-orientation to which narrative events stand in relation. Voice, on the contrary, refers to the speech or other overt means through which events and existents are communicated to the audience. Point of view does not mean expression; it only means the perspective in terms of which the expression is made. The perspective and the expression need not be lodged in the same person." (153) Then we get a discussion of speech acts and how they differ for narrators or characters. Characters speech acts are always within the story, hence freer because narratorial speech acts are bounded by the act of narrating. We then get a bunch of "nonnarrated" representations where the device we can assume is the stenographer. You have written records (like letters), dialogue (like a play, but not only like a play), soliloquy, interior monologue (not to be confused with stream of consciousness - but they are both "nonnarrated" sorta). The last chapter deals with a progression of forms of covert narration to overt narration. Here we have the issue of indirect (she said she had to go) and direct style (she had to go), indirect marking the narrator more than direct. Presupposition (close to what could be exposition in movies, i think) a covertish form of narration. Narration is always limited (this is presupposed by Aristotlean formation of narrative (start at the beginning, stop at the end, right?) The narrater can kinda covertly slip from one characters inner thoughts to another. Ok so more overt kinds of narration include, set descriptions (scenery and stuff), summarizing time, telling what character do NOT think, etc. Commentary is the final conveyance of the narrator's voice that Chatman discusses. Ironic commentary on the narrative is what the unrealiable narrator is based on. Oh wait, and he also talks about the narratee and the way he is invoked by the narrator. That's really all I have to say about that!
Keywords
Narrative, Open, Story, Discourse, Form, Content.
Other Thoughts
"We should not be disconcerted by the fact that texts are inevitably mixed; in that respect they resemble most organic objects."(18)
"The public demand for sequels and serials is not to be written off as naive Philistinism. It represents a legitimate desire, of theoretical interest, to extend the illusion, to find out how fate disposes of characters in whom we have come to invest emotion and interest." (134)
"Validity is not at issue: a fictional-character trait, as opposed to a real-person trait, can only be part of the narrative construct." (138)
Other QE Works Cited
Genette, Girard. Narrative Discourse
Barthes, Roland. Image-Music-Text
Barthes, Roland. S/Z
Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination
Aristotle. Poetics
Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978.
Field
Narrative
Summary
Can I just reproduce the comprehensive diagram from the end of the book? No? Ok, fine. Chatman is interested in the form of narrative - this is his way of going about answering the question, What is Narrative? Also, he aims at a structure that might accomodate a wide swath of cases. He is deeply influenced by Genette, Barthes and of course, Aristotle. He is a structuralist. Ok then. So following Aristotle, all narratives must have a structure that invokes wholeness, transformation and self-regulation - this is how stuff makes sense to us, yeah? "Clearly narrative is a whole because it is constituted of elements - events and existents - that differ from what they constitute..self-regulation means the structure maintains and closes itself...the process by which a narrative event is expressed is its 'transformation'"(21) Narratives structures are semiotic - narrative signifieds are event, character and detail of setting. Narrative can never be complete (it can't be wholy accurate mimesis because the amount of stuff you'd have to imitate is infinite) Ok so Narrative is divided into two categories, Story and Discourse. Let's begin with Story (since Chatman does). Story - "the content or chain of events...plus existents." (19) This is made up of events which are either acts or happenings - changes of state. Convention is important in understanding this - versimillitude, motivation, etc. dictate how acts may follow one another to make a plot of a story - making it a chain of events, right? So then there is a hierarchy to these events - they are either big deals (kernels) or little deals (satellites). The situation of kernels and satelites dictates stuff like suspense and surprise, etc. Ok, also there is the issue of time. There is the time of the reader - discourse-time, and the time as it is unfolding in the plot - story-time. Chatman goes off of Genette's time analysis here and distinguishes the three categories that govern time in narrative as order, duration and frequency. Characters also have their own versions of time - character-NOW (the time the character is in the present of) and narrator-NOW (the moment of the story telling). This is all microstructure of narrative, but as for macrostructure, the general designs of plots as they stand now, well, it doesn't seem like Chatman is all in for it: "Perhaps the first observation to make about such taxonomies is that they rest on unacknowledged cultural presuppositions." (88) This is why he prefers the formal considerations of structuralism. So besides plot there were also existents to consider. The first one to consider is Story-space, easy in film, a bit harder in verbal narrative, where the reader must create it in the imagination through prompts from the narration. Then we have character, which Chatman believes has gotten a short shrift in narrative theory up until now.They are not secondary to the plot, or merely conjured in service of it, and they are open constructs, filled in by the reader and off the page. Characters have traits, characteristics that exist over the time of the narrative. "The setting 'sets a character off' in the usual figurative sense of te expression; it is the place and collection of objects 'against which' his actions and passions appropriately emerge."(139)
Ok now moving on to discourse, "the expression plane [of narrative which]...is a set of narrative statements." (146) I'm going to fake the diagram that Chatman produces to relation of reader, narrator, author, etc.
Real Author->[Implied Author->(Narrator)->(Narratee)->Implied Reader]->Real Reader. We need to realize this complication to discuss point of view and narrational strategy (the focus of the rest of the book). "The crucial difference between 'point of view' and narrative voice: point of view is the physical place or ideological situation or practical live-orientation to which narrative events stand in relation. Voice, on the contrary, refers to the speech or other overt means through which events and existents are communicated to the audience. Point of view does not mean expression; it only means the perspective in terms of which the expression is made. The perspective and the expression need not be lodged in the same person." (153) Then we get a discussion of speech acts and how they differ for narrators or characters. Characters speech acts are always within the story, hence freer because narratorial speech acts are bounded by the act of narrating. We then get a bunch of "nonnarrated" representations where the device we can assume is the stenographer. You have written records (like letters), dialogue (like a play, but not only like a play), soliloquy, interior monologue (not to be confused with stream of consciousness - but they are both "nonnarrated" sorta). The last chapter deals with a progression of forms of covert narration to overt narration. Here we have the issue of indirect (she said she had to go) and direct style (she had to go), indirect marking the narrator more than direct. Presupposition (close to what could be exposition in movies, i think) a covertish form of narration. Narration is always limited (this is presupposed by Aristotlean formation of narrative (start at the beginning, stop at the end, right?) The narrater can kinda covertly slip from one characters inner thoughts to another. Ok so more overt kinds of narration include, set descriptions (scenery and stuff), summarizing time, telling what character do NOT think, etc. Commentary is the final conveyance of the narrator's voice that Chatman discusses. Ironic commentary on the narrative is what the unrealiable narrator is based on. Oh wait, and he also talks about the narratee and the way he is invoked by the narrator. That's really all I have to say about that!
Keywords
Narrative, Open, Story, Discourse, Form, Content.
Other Thoughts
"We should not be disconcerted by the fact that texts are inevitably mixed; in that respect they resemble most organic objects."(18)
"The public demand for sequels and serials is not to be written off as naive Philistinism. It represents a legitimate desire, of theoretical interest, to extend the illusion, to find out how fate disposes of characters in whom we have come to invest emotion and interest." (134)
"Validity is not at issue: a fictional-character trait, as opposed to a real-person trait, can only be part of the narrative construct." (138)
Other QE Works Cited
Genette, Girard. Narrative Discourse
Barthes, Roland. Image-Music-Text
Barthes, Roland. S/Z
Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination
Aristotle. Poetics
# posted by SMRT : 6:30 PM
