In the second edition of her text Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan answers some of the most basic questions surrounding narratology, such as what narrative
is, what fiction is, and how we should understand our approaches and techniques for dealing with narrative. Early in the text, Rimmon-Kenan makes clear her desire to focus her study on narrative fiction that follows two guiding principles: a communication process must occur, and the narrative must be a verbal one, as distinct from other narrative media. After introducing these basic principles, Rimmon-Kenan undertakes a thematic approach to narratology, asking questions of narrative elements such as events, characters, focalization, time, characterization, and speech representation. Rather than offering a broad overview of the major narratological players, Rimmon-Kenan approaches an understanding of narratology guided by subject, and uses these subjects to revisit some of the foundational ideas proposed by scholars like Genette, Chatman, and Bremond.Rimmon-Kenan begins her investigation by focusing on two elements of story: events and characters. She offers an overview of the notion of story, and asserts that most narratologists concur that there exists the possibility for an immanent story structure within every story. Story, according to Rimmon-Kenan, is an abstraction from the style of the text in question (i.e. Victorian dialect), the language in which the text is written (i.e. English), and the medium or sign system (i.e. Cinema, words, gestures), and is therefore transferable within each of these three subsets (from medium to medium, language to language, and within the same language) (8). Story also includes two levels of structure: deep and surface. The deep structure of the story can only be retrieved through a backward retracing of the transformation process, and deep structures are not in themselves narratives. Surface structure, however, is comprised of events combined according to temporal succession and causality. While Gerard Prince argues that the minimal story must have three conjoined events (with the first and third stative, while the second one is active), Rimmon-Kenan suggests that the only thing necessary for a minimal story is the presence of temporality. Rimmon-Kenan then introduces Propp’s Morphology (in a succinct, though refreshingly clear, analysis), and discusses Claude Bremond’s logically ordered model of story sequences. Within her analysis of contemporary thoughts on the development of character, some ways that Rimmon-Kenan diverges from other narratologists is her suggestion that characters need not be either just text or just personas, but instead can be an amalgam of both elements. In contemplating E.M. Forester’s distinction between flat and round characters, Rimmon-Kenan implies that these divisions are acceptable, but perhaps overly reductive and not appropriate for accounting for subtlety within or among characters.
The book then moves to a discussion of text in terms of time, characterization, and focalization. Rimmon-Kenan suggests that time is a necessity of narrative fiction, and, while she discusses the concepts first proposed by Genette such as duration, frequency, and order, she also suggests that to eliminate a notion of time would be to eliminate all narrative fiction. This chapter, while one the one hand making some seemingly surface-levels statements, was also one of the most compelling areas of the text for me, as it nearly begs the reader to consider a narrative text that does not correspond to these ideas of temporality. Characterization occurs within the text via two basic types, direct and indirect characterization, as well as though the reinforcement of character by analogy. Regarding focalization, Rimmon-Kenan discusses her view of the term as more appropriate than more common ones such as point-of-view, citing the fact that focalization has a degree of abstractness that separates it from concrete notions of point-of-view. Focalization, distinct from narration, has both a subject and an object and can be either external or internal to the story.
Moving on towards a discussion of narration, the text investigates notions of real and implied authors, and Rimmon-Kenan asserts that only four of Chatman’s six narratological participants are necessary to the conception of narrative: the real author, the real reader, the narrator, and the narratee. Speech representation can be either diegetic (the poet himself is the speaker and does not attempt to suggest otherwise) or mimetic (in which the poet tries to create the illusion that it is not he who speaks). Compellingly, Rimmon-Kenan asserts that “all that narrative can do is create an illusion, an effect, a semblance of mimesis, but it does so through diegesis (in the Platonic sense)” (109). For Rimmon-Kenan, the text also maintains a careful balance between delay and revelation, tempting the reader to know more while still allowing dropping enough breadcrumbs to keep the reader satisfied throughout.
Rimmon-Kenan concludes her book with a discussion of deconstruction, a trend which seems to undermine her goal of attaching specificity to the form of verbal, narrative fiction. Deconstruction hopes to find similarities across media, a concept that does not necessarily fit with the original premise of this text. In her afterward, however, written to accompany the 2002 second edition of the text, Rimmon-Kenan addresses some of these same issues. She concedes, I believe, that narrative may very well extend across mediums, and that further study of the field may well benefit from some revision of her initial thoughts on the process.
In his related text The Rhetoric of Fiction, Wayne C. Booth provides further explication on some related ideas. Jumping into the notions of showing vs. telling, Booth offers some ideas on t
he voice of the author in the text, and ultimately asserts that the line between showing and telling is “always, to some degree, an arbitrary one” (20). In subsequent chapters, Booth undertakes the task of seriously investigating common literary tropes, such as “novels must be realistic, “art ignores the audience,” and “all authors should be objective.” In all of these sections, Booth generally exposes the inherent truth to a modified version of these statements, while also revealing the ways in which the statement will not apply to every situation. While I haven’t yet had a chance to read Booth’s text cover to cover, I like the way that he provides some in-depth models on understanding the application of these principles to literary texts, such as when in chapter 11, “The Price of Impersonal Narration, I: Confusion of Distance” Booth explicates a detailed analysis of the ways in which distance affect comprehension in such texts as Gulliver’s Travels and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
he voice of the author in the text, and ultimately asserts that the line between showing and telling is “always, to some degree, an arbitrary one” (20). In subsequent chapters, Booth undertakes the task of seriously investigating common literary tropes, such as “novels must be realistic, “art ignores the audience,” and “all authors should be objective.” In all of these sections, Booth generally exposes the inherent truth to a modified version of these statements, while also revealing the ways in which the statement will not apply to every situation. While I haven’t yet had a chance to read Booth’s text cover to cover, I like the way that he provides some in-depth models on understanding the application of these principles to literary texts, such as when in chapter 11, “The Price of Impersonal Narration, I: Confusion of Distance” Booth explicates a detailed analysis of the ways in which distance affect comprehension in such texts as Gulliver’s Travels and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.Current Questions Regarding Narratology:
Understanding deep structure seems important to understanding the foundational aspects of narrative, though Rimmon-Kenan spends little time on the topic, favoring the surface structure instead. I’d like to get a better grasp on the models for understanding deep structure from Levi-Strauss and Greimas, which Rimmon-Kenan points to but doesn’t dwell on (11-13).
Claude Bremond’s model of story sequence is compelling, and highly detailed. I’d like to spend some more time understanding his approach to sequencing stories, particularly in relation to the chart mapping the plot of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (24-26).
I’m wondering if people have frequently questioned Rimmon-Kenan’s assertions about time as necessary to narrative. It seems that postmodernists are certainly playing with notions of time, but has anyone truly refuted the fact that we read or understand events in temporal order? Maybe Raymond Federman’s Double or Nothing (which I haven’t ever read, but understand to be so broken down as to be nearly incoherent)?
From Rimon-Kenan’s postscript, it seems as though many of her original statements have come under attack by scholars in the recent past. While she highlights the need to “emphasize the differences” between classical and postclassical narratology (148), she doesn’t seem to suggest that one form eclipses the other. What is the most controversial point that she makes, and have any new forms of narrative or narrative theories significantly undermined her original work?
Any thoughts on what might be the best way to organize an intro-level, cross-referenced understanding of narrratology to an online audience? How do you organize these sometime contradictory terms and understandings of texts in a meaningful, but not overwhelming, way?
