1. 08 Literary Narrative Fiction
History, Genres, Analysis

2. Narratives
Personal, political, historical, legal, medical narratives: narrative’s power to capture certain truths and experiences in special ways - unlike other modes of explanation and analysis such as statistics, descriptions, summaries, or reasoning via conceptual abstractions

3. The spectrum of fiction
fact – fiction – truth? History Realism Romance Fantasy Realism vs romance: a matter of perception vs a matter of vision two principal ways fiction can be related to life
Realism Romance

4. 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

5. 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

6. Literary, narrative, fictional:
distinct features, do not presuppose each other
Where do we place lyric poetry?
Marie-Laure Ryan, Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana UP, 1991

7. Literary, narrative, fictional:
examples
literary
narrative
fictional +
Lit. narr. fict. -
Nonlit. nonnarr. nonfiction

8. The history of fiction
Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (1957)
Dale Spender, Mothers of the Novel (1988)
Margaret Anne Doody, The True Story of the Novel (1996)

9. Novel In: J. A. Cuddon: Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. London: Penguin, 1999
Derived from Italian novella, 'tale, piece of news‘
applied to a wide variety of writings
only common attribute is that they are extended pieces of prose fiction
The length of novels varies greatly
when is a novel not a novel or a long short-story or a short novel or a novella?
Fewer and fewer rules
in contemporary practice a novel is between words and, say,

10. Cuddon Novel The actual term 'novel' has had a variety of meanings and
implications at different stages.
From roughly the 15th to the 18th c. its meaning tended to
derive from the Italian novella and the Spanish novela (the
French term nouvelle, is closely related)
The term (often used in a plural sense) denoted short stories or
tales of the kind one finds in Boccaccio's Decameron (c. 1349
51). Nowadays we would classify all the contents of these as
short stories.

11. Cuddon Novel /novelty
The term denoted a prose narrative about characters and their
actions in what was recognizably everyday life and usually in the
present, with the emphasis on things being 'new' or a 'novelty'.
It was used in contradistinction to 'romance'.
In the 19th c. the concept of 'novel' was enlarged.

12. Cuddon Novel A form of story or prose narrative containing
characters, action and incident and, perhaps, a
plot

13. Cuddon Novel The form - susceptible to change and development
Pliable and adaptable to a seemingly endless
variety of topic and themes
A wide range of sub-species or categories.

14. Cuddon Novel The subject matter of the novel eludes classification.
A number of these classifications shade off into each other.
For example, psychological novel is a term which embraces
many books; proletarian, propaganda and thesis novels tend to
have much in common; the picaresque narrative is often a novel
of adventure; a saga novel may also be a regional novel.

15. Cuddon Novel The origins of the genre are obscure
but in the time of the XIIth Dynasty Middle
Kingdom (c BC) Egyptians were writing
fiction of a kind which one would describe as a
novel today

16. Cuddon Novel From Classical times
Daphnis and Chloe (2nd c. BC) by Longus
The Golden Ass (2nd c. AD) by Apuleius
Satyricon (1st c. AD) of Petronius Arbiter
Most of these are concerned with love and contain the
rudiments of novels as we understand them today

17. Cuddon Novel Oriental prose fiction
Arabian Nights‘ Entertainments, or The Thousand and One
Nights, 10th c. the collection, collected and established as a
group of stories probably by an Egyptian professional story-teller
at some time between the 14th and 16th c.
Became known in Europe early in the 18th c., since when they
have had a considerable influence.

18. Cuddon Novel Collections of novella or short tales Italy -
Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron (1349–52, revised 1370–1371)
had much influence on Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (late 14th c.)
Matteo Bandello’s Le Novelle (written between and 1560)
France -
Marguerite of Navarre‘ Heptaméron (published in 1558)
These were integrated short stories but important as they were
in prose
In their method of narration and in their creation and
development of character they are forerunners of the modern
novel

19. Cuddon Novel
Until the 14th c. most of the literature of entertainment (and the
novel is usually intended as an entertainment) was confined to
narrative verse, particularly the epic and the romance.
Romance eventually yielded the word roman, which is the term
for novel in most European languages.
In some ways the novel is a descendant of the medieval
romances, which, in the first place, like the epic, were written in
verse and then in prose (e.g. Malory's Morte D'Arthur, 1485).
Verse narratives had been supplanted by prose narratives by the
end of the 17th c.

20. Cuddon Novel
Spain - was ahead of the rest of Europe in the development of
the novel form.
Cervantes's Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605, 1615) satirized
chivalry and a number of the earlier novels
In France Rabelais's Gargantua (1534) and Pantagruel (1532)
can be classed as novels of phantasy, or mythopoeic

21. Cuddon Novel England, end of the 15th c., extended prose narrative:
John Lyly's Euphues (in two parts, 1578 and 1580
Sir Philip Sidney's pastoral romance Arcadia (1590).
1719 – Daniel Defoe published his story of adventure Robinson
Crusoe, one in a long tradition of desert island fiction
Defoe's other two main contributions to the novel form were
Moll Flanders (1722), a sociological novel, and A Journal of the
Plague Year (1722) – a reconstruction and thus a piece of
historical fiction

22. Books on Fiction
Booth, Wayne: The Rhetoric of Fiction. Second edition. London: Penguin, 1991 (1983)
Lodge, David: The Art of Fiction. London: Penguin, 1992
Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith: Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. London and New York: Methuen, 1983

23. Sub-genres Integrated short stories
Arabian Nights' Entertainments, or The Thousand and One Nights,
Boccaccio: Decameron
James Joyce: Dubliners

24. Sub-genres Romance any sort of stroy of chivalry or of love
Cervantes: Don Quixote ( )
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (14th c.)
Thomas Malory: Le Morte D’Arthur (15th c.)
Pastoral romance
Longus: Daphnis and Chloe (2nd c. A.D.)
Philip Sidney: Arcadia (1590)
Anti-pastoral:
Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d’Urbevilles (1891), Jude the Obscure (1895)

25. Sub-genres Picaresque novel
tells the life of a knave or a picaroon who is the servant of severel masters
Daniel Defoe: Moll Flanders (1722)
Henry Fielding: Jonathan Wild (1743)

26. Sub-genres Novel of adventure / desert island novel
(related to te picaresque novel and the romance)
Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe (1719)
R.L. Stevenson: Treasure Island (1883)
Mark Twain: Tom Sawyer (1876)
Huckleberry Finn (1885)
James Fenimore Cooper: The Last of the Mohicans (1826)

27. Sub-genres Gothic novel
a type of romance, popular from the 1760s until the 1820s, has terror and cruelty as main themes, impact on the ghost story and the horror story
Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto (1764
Ann Radcliffe: Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)
Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey (1818)
Charles Dickens: Great Expectations (1861)
R. L. Stevenson: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
Dracula, doppelgänger

28. Sub-genres Epistolary novel
in the form of letters, popular in the 18th c.
Samuel Richardson: Pamela (1740) and Clarissa
Harlowe (1747, 1748)
Tobias Smollett: Humphrey Clinker (1771)

29. Sub-genres Sentimental novel / novel of sentimentality
popular in the 18th c., distresses of the virtuous
Samuel Richardson: Pamela (1740)
Oliver Goldsmith: The Vicar of Wakefield (1766)
Sentimentality in fiction
Laurence Sterne: A Sentimental Journey (1768)

30. Sub-genres Historical novel
a form of fictional narrative which reconstructs history imaginatively
Walter Scott: Waverly (1814)
William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair ( )
Robert Graves: I, Claudius (1934)
William Golding: Rites of Passage (1980)

31. Sub-genres Documentary novel
based on documentary evidence in the shape of newspapee article, etc.
Truman Capote: In Cold Blood (1966)
Graham Greene: The Quiet American (1955)

32. Sub-genres
Key novel
actual persons are presented under fictitious names
Aldous Huxley: Point Counter Point (1928) (D. H. Lawrence)

33. Sub-genres Thesis / sociological / propaganda novel
treats of a social, political, religious problem
Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
The condition of England novel /regional novel
Charles Dickens: Hard Times (1854)
Charlotte Brontë: Shirley (1849)

34. Sub-genres
Utopia
[gr. Ou + topos = no place and eutopia = place where all is well]
Thomas More: Utopia (1516)
George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels (1726, 1735)
William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
Anti-utopia, dystopia
Science fiction
Phantasy or fantasy

35. Sub-genres Campus novel has a university campus as setting
Mary McCarthy: The Groves of Academe (1952)
Kingsley Amis: Lucky Jim (1954)
David Lodge: Changing Places (1975)

36. Sub-genres The saga / chronicle novel
narrative about the life of a large family
John Galsworthy: Forsyte Saga ( )

37. Sub-genres
Time novel
employs stream of consciousness technique, time is used as a theme
James Joyce: Ulysses (1922)
Marcel Proust: A la recherche du temps perdu ( )

38. Sub-genres Psychological novel
concerned with emotional, mental lives of the characters
Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway (1925)

39. 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?)
types of setting
types of narrator

40. 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

41. 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

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

43. Setting
The space where the narrative takes place: rural setting, urban setting, nature scenes, country houses etc. Settings often echo or emphasize other features: Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847) Yorkshire moors Wuthering Heights ↔ Thrushcross Grange Earnshaws Lintons harsh, rough warm, soft, civilised

44. Space and Time James Joyce, Ulysses (1922) Dublin, 16 June 1904
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925)
London,
a single day in June,
after WWI

45. 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)

46. Narrator, narration, 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

47. Narrative perspective
viewing aspect: focus
like a movie camera:
choosing, framing, emphasizing, distorting limited/unlimited (omniscient narrator)
stand back: dramatic focus
verbal aspect: voice

48. Point of view visual perspective ideological framework
basic types of narration: 1st person (I-narration)
3rd person (they-narration)
e.g., 'window' on text:
seems objective
internal vs external
restricted knowledge vs unrestricted knowledge
(seemed, looked as if)
texts with instability of point of view: watch out for WHO experiences and WHAT is experienced

49. Focalization external focalization: unidentified narrator
character focalization: a character experiences
focalizer: the one who is looking
focalized: what is being focussed on
expression and construction of types of consciousness and self-consciousness
Shifting narrative viewpoints, several narrators:
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)

50. Narratology
The study of narrative in literature Early examples in the 20th century: Vladimir Propp (Russian Formalist) Morphology of the Folktale (1928) Claude Lévi-Strauss (French Structuralist) Anthropologie Structurale (1958) (myths) Gérard Genette Narrative Discourse (1972)

51. 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)

52. Genette’s system
narrative: the result of the interaction of its component levels 3 basic kinds of narrator: - narrator is absent from his own narrative ((‘heterodiegetic narrator’)) - narrator is inside his narrative (1st person) ((‘homodiegetic narrator’)) - narrator is inside his narrative and also main character ((‘autodiegetic narrator’))

53. Roland Barthes ( )
France: from structuralism to poststructuralism attempt to describe narrative as a formal system based on the model of a grammar ‘The death of the Author’ (essay from 1967) (against the concept of the author as a way of forcing a meaning onto a text) S/Z (1970) a critical reading of Balzac’s Sarrasine text open to interpretation

54. Task
What can you notice about the following excerpts? (Can you guess the period, the author, the work?) How is the weather defining the beginning of the book in Chapter 1? What do we find out about the narrator from the way Mrs Fairfax is introduced in Ch 12? How is the introduction of the people in Moor House different in Ch 30? Do you notice anything special about the way the last chapter, Ch 38 begins?

55. Chapter 1
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs Reed, when there was no company, dined early), the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question. (Penguin Classics edition, p 39)

56. Chapter 12
The promise of a smooth career, which my first calm introduction to Thornfield Hall seemed to pledge, was not belied on a longer acquaintance with the place and its inmates. Mrs. Fairfax turned out to be what she appeared, a placid-tempered, kind-natured woman, of competent education and average intelligence. My pupil was a lovely child; who had been spoilt and indulged (140)

57. Chapter 30
The more I knew of the inmates of Moor House, the better I liked them. In a few days I have so far recovered my health that I could sit up all day, and walk out sometimes. I could join with Diana and Mary in all their occupations, converse with them as much as they wished, and aid them when and where they would allow me. There was a reviving pleasure in this intercourse, of a kind now tasted by me for the first time – the pleasure arising from perfect congeniality of tastes, sentiments, and principles. (376)

58. Chapter 38
Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and clerk, were alone present. When we got back from church, I went into the kitchen of the manor house, where Mary was cooking the dinner, and John cleaning the knives, and I said – ‘Mary, I have been married to Mr Rochester this morning.’ (474)