Narrative Situations

Narrative has two dimensions:

• Discourse: How is it being told? (manner in which text is conveyed)

• Story: What is being told? (Plot, setting, character)

Discourse: Narrative situatinnons

Model of narrative transmission according to Stanzel:

- Authorial narrative situation

• Narrator outside world of characters

• Omniscient and omnipresent, limitless insight into minds of characters

• Can address reader directly

• Authoritative voice: Can pass moral judgement and assess events → Be careful of perceived “objectivity”

- First person narrative situation

• told by character in the story world → There is an I narrating

• knowledge of narrator limited → Intimate view in life

• Difference:

  • Narrating-I: tells story that has already happened

    <--—> Experiencing-I: is directly involved, tells as it happens

  • I-as-protagonist <--—> I-as-witness

• First-person narrative can be unreliable

- Figual narrative situation:

• narrated world presented in third person from perspective of one or more characters (reflector character)

• Narrator does not appear as implied individual, no commentary

• Internal perspective dominates (of reflector character)

→ Novels can combine different narrative situations