Story, Discourse, and a Little Bit of History

This week, I'm going to post one longer write-up on Seymour Chatman's Story and Discourse, and a shorter summary of the history of narratology, cribbed from the first few essays in Phelan and Rabinowitz's A Companion to Narrative Theory.

Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film, Seymour Chatman

Seymour Chatman’s Story and Discourse, first published in 1978, reads like a primer to the macro and micro elements of, surprisingly enough, story and discourse. This is a great text, for both the insights that Chatman provides and the clear and deft way that he introduces and explicates information that can, in lesser hands, get somewhat messy. Chatman outlines some of the major contributions of thinkers from Aristotle to Propp, Bakhtin to Genette, and then embarks on his own analysis of these ideas, application of the theories, and, when necessary, revision and critique of the preceding thought patterns.

Breaking the text into five sections, Chatman first outlines a general introduction to the field and a structuralist approach to it. He then moves to outlining notions relevant to story (events and existents), and discourse (nonnarrated stories and covert versus overt narrators). What follows is a brief summary of some of the more salient points Chatman makes.

1. Introduction
Here Chatman outlines his basic approach to literary theory, in which he hopes to study the nature of literature, not the specific literary works. He outlines his reasoning behind a formulaic (though not unyielding) approach to studying literature, and distinguishes the two major elements of any narrative: the story/ fabula (i.e. – what happens in the story), and the discourse/ sjuzet (how the story is related to an audience, the medium that the narrative takes). Outlining his rationale behind advocating narrative as a structure, Chatman utilizes three essential elements of a structured group of objects common to other fields like math, social anthropology, philosophy, linguistics, and physics: wholeness, transformation, and self-regulation, and applies these functions to narrative works. Chatman also pushes for an idea of narrative as semiotic, meaningful structure in its own right, suggesting that “narrative structure imparts meanings […] precisely because it can endow an otherwise meaningless ur-text with eventhood, characterhood, and settinghood, in a normal one-to-one standing-for relationship” (25). Chatman continues to outline Roman Ingarden’s distinction between the “real” object and the aesthetic object, a useful way to think of story and discourse.

2. Story: Events
Events occur as either actions (nonverbal physical acts, speeches, thoughts, and feelings, perceptions, or sensations) or happenings (a predication of which the character or other focused existent is a narrative object). Events are correlative and causative, and Chatman distinguishes between kernels (necessary to the “storyness” of the story) and satellites (auxiliary, can be removed without altering the foundational story). Some notions salient to the microstructure of story are order (normal sequence vs. anachronous sequence), duration (relationship between time it takes to read narrative to time the story events lasted), and frequency of events. Relevant to the macrostructure of story are such concepts as types of plots (such as the six proposed by Aristotle, the two types proposed by Frye, or the three types proposed by Crane).

3. Story: Existents
Chatman discusses the notion of space within narratives, distinguishing between the salient features of film (visual narrative) space and written (verbal narrative) space. This space, of course, is filled by characters (existents) fulfilling actions or thinking. Chatman argues for a conception of character as open – allowing compelling questions to be asked and answered about his nature and behaviors. Here Chatman also outlines the contribution of setting to narrative.

4. Discourse: Nonnarrated Stories
Narrative statements exist in two realms, process and stasis. The narrative style of a story highlights its nature as either mimetic or diegetic (showing vs. telling). The distinction between the author and narrator is important to understanding the discourse, as well as a grasp of the point of view that the story is told in. All stories are mediated to become narrative; the “least” mediated ones are diaries or epistolary novels, which presume immediacy (though they do not actually attain perfect synchronism with writing about life exactly as it happens). It is important to be able and willing to recognize distinctions in narrative voice in order to make educated conclusions about the work as a whole.

5. Discourse: Covert versus Overt Narrators
The role of the narrator shifts depending on how the audience identifies him or her; as his he attains more attributes in the story we get a stronger sense of his presence in the discourse. While covert narrators can’t easily express judgments on the story (thus blowing their cover), overt narrators can and will color our perception of the story. As we come to recognize a narrator as distinct from a character, we see that Ethos can apply in fiction to the narrator only. In the final pages Chatman discusses the role of the narratee within narrative. A scan of the final diagram of narrative structure is reproduced below.

This work was exciting for me in several ways. I felt that Chatman opened up doors: establishing a need for a systematic, formulaic approach to narrative theory and setting a great example. His critical analysis was well-formed and illuminating, and his writing about both macro and micro elements of narrative theory was lucid yet compelling in its own right. While still acknowledging the theoretical nature of this book, Chatman has written a text that gives space to intellectual consumption and criticism and provides numerous examples of the theory in practice.

Some thoughts on the text:

Chatman pushes for an idea of narrative as structured, and in doing so asserts its “wholeness,” suggesting that an element is whole because it is constituted of elements that differ from what they constitute (21). I wonder about this claim. Are open-ended narratives “whole” in this sense? What about new narrative techniques – i.e. collaborative, dynamic works, auto-generated narratives, etc. Are these narratives whole? Are these works narrative at all, if we subscribe to Chatman’s definition? I’m not disagreeing with Chatman; I’m just questioning the logic. Perhaps the distinction between closure and resolution may be a helpful notion to consider in terms of wholeness, though Chatman considers closure more in the domain of self-regulation of narrative. Does Chatman undo his own logic when he discusses the self-selecting, incomplete nature of narratives (28-29)?

My Bakhtin foundations are a little shaky, so when Chatman writes that Bakhtin argues for a duplex notion of quotation, as being both signs and markers or characters (107), I’d like to delve a little deeper into this idea. How can they be both? Does indirect discourse also act in this doubled way?

I feel like much of Chatman arguments stems from a nearly grammatical approach to narrative; parsing out the individual elements to arrive at the greater whole. I’m intrigued by this structuralist approach and wonder if greater, more exhaustive critical works have yielded success across a battery of narrative texts?

Speaking of multi-faceted narratives, Chatman suggests that “work should proceed genre by genre” (95). Doesn’t this have some telling implications for Chatman’s own theories: namely that there are either few or no universals about narrative, or that the differences between narratives of different genres exceed their similarities, and thus perhaps the notion of a general field of “narrative discourse” is not as useful as we might like to think?

Finally, Chatman goes to great depths to outline the significant differences between indirect and direct discourse, tagged vs. free, etc. I’ve always been shaky on these concepts, having attended public school, and would like to spend a little more time applying these notions to texts. While Chatman uses many examples that make it easy to recognize these different types (when they are being pointed out to the reader), I’ve found that I stumble when trying to pinpoint the types myself, without Chatman’s aid.

Historical Essays in A Companion to Narrative Theory, James Phelan and Peter Rabinowitz, Ed.

In this text, several essays outline the (sometimes) contentious history of narratology as a field. In his essay on the “A Genealogy of Early Developments,” David Herman describes narratology as originating from a morphological approach to narrative structure, expanding its scope to include as foundational three interconnected aspects of novel theory: characterization of fictions as organic wholes, adoption of a descriptive rather than prescriptive approach to narrative analysis, and skeptical attitude toward exact recipes or protocols for the production of fictional texts (James, “The Art of Fiction,” 1884). After Russian Formalism narratology adopts a semiotic/linguistic approach to narrative, borrowing the same structure and many of the same terminology from this related (though, importantly flawed in some ways) field. A survey of the history of narratology reveals that Narrative theory materializes as “fields of forces emerging at different rates of progression and impinging on one another through more or less diffuse causal networks” (31).

In her essay “From Structuralism to the Present,” Monika Fludernik picks up where Herman leaves off, outlining the more recent history of narratology. Structuralism is marked by its aspirations to scientificity and descriptive aims, yet runs into problems with its difficult relation between theory and practice. As the field moves into the 70s and 80s, most narratologists are concerned with discourse and narration rather than plot. Greater specificity is then incorporated into the field, as contextual, conversational, gender-oriented, and post-colonial narratology develop. Finally, Fludernik suggests that the cognitive turn of narratology may be one way in which the field could more closely reach its scientific goals.

With this historical background, one can better see how the elements of narratology, and the major players, converse and question each other. Foundations have been set for the revision and adaptation of narratological principles, and a history of narratology shows the important ways that thinking has shifted as the field had developed.

The F-Bomb (on repeat)

You've heard of the Christian Bale incident, in which he lost his mind and engaged in a profanity-laced tirade against one of the crewmen on set last summer. I think that the news broke Monday. In the tradition of great 21st-century procrastinators everywhere, I offer you this (likewise profanity-laced) remix of the outburst, by L.A. artist RevoLucian.

In case I need to say it, this is Not Safe for Work, or Children, or your mother. But RevoLucian has done a great job pouncing on the piece, and the whole scenario is rather funny.

Narrative/Theory, David Ricther, ed.

This semester, I'm embarking on a directed study in Principles of Narratology. I'm attempting to read as much as I can about the work, and then apply some of these foundational principles to some new media and electronic works. I thought that I might periodically post my responses and reviews of some of the texts I am reading here on my blog.

Today's Text: Narrative/Theory by David H. Richter, ed.


In reading through David Richter’s Narrative/Discourse I have found an especially rich source that works as an introduction to several different aspects of narrative, including its history, its methodology, and some ideologies surrounding narrative. Richter begins his text with a general introduction to the field as it applies to literature across decades. I find Richter’s extension of Iser’s “gaps” theory illuminating, as he points out that gaps do not just exist in a narrative but indeed exist in that narrative to encourage us to continue engaging with that narrative, as they give rise to either curiosity or desire (3). This notion of desire seems to crop up several times in the remainder of the text, as it seems to be one of the key elements in driving forward the plot, characters, and audiences of any work. Interestingly, in discussing the “truth” inherent to narrative, Richter refers to Aristotle’s assertion that fictional literature is indeed more likely to conform to the “law of the necessary and probable” than real life because it represents what would happen in a life devoid and accidents and incidents. Narrative writers, then, most usually pander to the readers’ inherent conservatism in order to avoid the need for extreme naturalization in order to make sense of the text (4).

Compellingly, Richter highlights the struggle that the novel underwent before being included as true “literature,” a struggle synonymous with the one that is taking place today with newly emerging forms of belletristic discourse such as electronic and narrative discourse. As Henry James discusses in his writing on “The Art of Fiction,” the struggle to define the rigor and form of proper fiction was frequently derided in its early years. This history mimics the recent struggle to make legitimate electronic literature and new media work; a field that is often interpreted to be an unnecessary redundancy of print-media work. John Barth also hits on some interesting ideas that seem to apply strongly to new media work, in his discussion of non-traditional artistic works that bear witness to a rebellion against the traditions that have come before. Barth extends this idea to suggest that this trend to eliminate the traditional ideas of audience and author is best illuminated by Beckett and Borges, writers who have mastered both the form and function of their work. I think that this sentiment seems particularly salient in terms of electronic and new-media works, as the most common insult hurled against this field (indeed, I’ve hurled it myself many times), is that of substance over style. In Barth’s words, too many “technically up-to-date civilians” essentially become hacks delighting in the possibilities of the new medium without considering the art or substance inherent to these new possibilities, and just a few “technically up-to-date artists” exist who can use these new forms and new subjects to make meaningful work.

In Part II of his text, Richter highlights some of the key elements of narrative and narratology, outlining the two major tracks of formal analysis as structuralist-semiotic (exemplified by Ball, Banfield, Barthes, Cohn, Genette, and Prince), and Rhetorical Poetics (exemplified by Crane, Booth, Phelan, Friedman, and Rabinowitz). Essentially, the former group is most interested in what narrative is, while the latter group is most invested in how narrative works. Moving through an introduction to the terms and key concepts of narrative, Richter outlines the key differences between story (which includes plot, character, pattern, and rhythm) and discourse (which includes order, duration, frequency, point-of-view, focalization, voice, language, and audience). The text then continues to include exemplary excerpts from many of the key narratologists applying these different elements to a given text. Many of these critical essays not only demonstrate the application of these principles but also question these applications, such as in James Phelan’s analysis most centrally focused on Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess.” While outlining the role character plays in this and other narratives, Phelan points out that such analysis raises problematic questions about the role of characters in a text, implying that the presence of literary characters requires that we assume we can define personhood, that we balance jumping to conclusions with making conclusions, and that we allow for more thematizing of characters than occurs in real life. This essay and several others in this section of the text provide excellent introductions to the methodological aspects of the field. In part III of his text, Richter concludes by incorporating the ideological responses to the literary cannon and narratology, questioning the representation of possibility of representation for minority groups within narratives. Overall, this work raises some excellent questions and concepts related to narratology, and provides a nicely broad yet digestible introduction to the field of narrative.

Some questions that this text raises for me:

What is the distinction in Richter’s argument about hypothetical stories and narratives as meaningfully different in terms of their claims to truth (5)?

How does the audience function in terms of narrative? Specifically, I understand that the authorial audience has double-consciousness of mimetic and synthetic, and that the narrative audience has a single consciousness of characters as real, but how does one read the chart on page 103 meaningfully?

James Phelan writes of the elements of dimension and function in a work. Dimension is defined as any attribute a character may be said to posses in isolation from the work, while function is an application of that attribute made through the text’s developing structure (116). This seems to be an important distinction but Phelan’s examples are not entirely illuminating to me on how to apply the two concepts to narrative.

In Gérard Genette’s essay, he outlines three “problems” for narrative discourse: time, mode, and voice (132). Genette then goes on to outline the specifics of the problem of time. I am not entirely convinced as to how Genette is using the term “problem” here; does he mean that these elements complicate narrative analysis or invalidate narrative possibility? Furthermore, given the focus only on the problem of time, I am wondering if there can be some discussion of the concepts of mode and voice, as Genette may see them.

I have always been somewhat sketchy on the concept of the “implied author.” Booth suggests that the implied author is the author’s “second self” (143). How does this “second self” show up in narrative most usually?

How central is ideology to the study of narratology? Is it foundational to the field, tangential, or in flux because of the increasing concerns with representativeness in the current era?

Internet, welcome me back into your bosomy folds…

It has been forever. I know that my adoring public waits for me with baited breath. Or, not so much.

Recently, I have been tasked with doing some research into podcasting and best practices. For those of you who might also be interested in this field, I’ve posted some of the most helpful pages that I found to my delicious account here.

For those of you looking for a pretty short, simple way to explain podcasting, you might be interested in this video by Lee LeFever on "Podcasting in Plain English."


If anyone else has some great resources to share, I’d love to hear from you. I’m also looking to find some good, creative video essays out there, so feel free to point me to ones that you love (or hate) and let me know why.

Graduate Students in Real Life...

Okay, so I was forwarded these posts by one of my professors. I'm pretty sure that this might be a good way to spend Saturday night with some of my fellow students out there:

Dancing my way through a Ph.D.
(must have been in a science-related field - if only I had gone to medical school like my mother wanted!)
and
Starring in my own graduate-student action game.


And I thought I had trouble just trying to get a dissertation committee down on paper...

:)-<

A guy, a girl, her ponytail, and some Def poetry, emoticon style. In this TED talk, Rives shares a little tale about love and loss, illustrated by emoticons. Much cooler than whatever you texted your mom this morning.

(For some reason the movie won't embed , so I don't have any pretty picture for you to click and watch. Sorry)

Document this Life

In a post-Panopticon world, many of us are heading out today to vote with questions lingering about our right to wear campaign buttons or drink free coffee.

What about questions surrounding our vote? How do we document our tiny struggle against "the man"? Some people are suggesting the need now to "Video the Vote:"

Video the Vote is a national network of citizen journalists, independent filmmakers, and media professionals working together to document voter suppression and disenfranchisement.

The effort to mediate our lives continues. Is this a necessary endeavour to assure that we remain (or finally become) enfranchised? Does suspicion run amuck unfairly? Or has blind faith prevailed too much already? Sadly, I'm leaning towards the side that feels the need to preserve my experience, both for posterity and the assurance that my experience will, in some way, "count."

I don't know how to deal with these issues. But I wonder how far the documentary urge will continue to stretch. Have you checked your harddrive lately? How many pictures are on it? Do you save your emails? If you really, really needed to, could you find out, in one way or another, what you were doing the week of November 1, 2006?