Narratives

1. Narratives

2. How can we define narrative? • According to Montgomery et al ‘stories involving a sequence of narrated events.’ • NARRATIVE CONTENT refers to events in a story and characters in a story and what happens to them • NARRATIVE FORM refers to how narrative content is formed • Stories can be told in two different ways: • CONTENT ORDER: the order in which the events in a story actually happened • FORM ORDER: the order of events the narrator/ author chooses to tell you the events in e.g. Flashbacks/ fragmented time • Mismatch between content order and form order is often an aesthetic strategy adopted by authors to create suspense and mystery, to organise understanding, to wilfully deceive the reader, to manipulate perception, to subvert narrative expectations...

3. Why order/select events? • Montgomery et al suggest that in real life, ‘reality is a mess’, therefore what are the advantages and disadvantages of ordering events in literature?

4. What are narrative expectations? • Generally in narrative, we expect change and movement. For example: Situation A (lack) > changes/leads to > Situation B (closure/resolution) • Often when our narrative expectations are subverted, a moral/ideological position emerges. It can reveal information about the author, the characters within it and indeed, the reader. • Terry Eagleton suggests that ‘narrative drive’ is expected: it reflects the human desire to know, ‘what happens next?’

5. The nature of narrative... • Narrative pace • Slows e.g. By dwelling on minor events • Accelerates e.g. By condensing/compressing major events • Narrative coherence • Are we presented with a unified story? E.g. Could be summed up by title of text • Narrative point of view • Use of narrator

6. Narrative point of view • Narrative point of view is important to form and content order because a point of view might switch during the narration of the story. We might therefore, become uncertain about the narrative content as it may alter depending on the narrator’s point of view.

7. Different types of narrative: • Omniscient narrator: All-knowing and will often subtly influence the readers’ judgements (e.g. Jane Austen/ George Eliot) • Intrusive narrator: Third person narrator who ‘intrudes’ on the story, commenting on and shaping our reactions • Unreliable narrator: a narrator whose reliability has been compromised, typically displaying lack of understanding or credibility. This may be due to age, mental disability or personal involvement – providing incomplete/inaccurate information as a result. Narrative reliability may be revealed gradually or at the end, as a twist. A critic describes it as lack of alignment with the ‘tastes, judgements (and) moral sense.’ • Self-conscious narrator: A narrator aware they are telling a story and will often comment on their own narrative (meta-narrative). A key feature of post-modernism • Epistolary: Letters used to reveal story/character. Allows for modulations of tone and language and indulges reader’s desire to snoop

8. The narrative of ‘Enduring Love’ could be defined as...?

9. For your allocated extract, consider: • The type of narrative and how it reflects on the novel as a whole • Interesting language features • Typical features of the narrator • Attitudes/feelings conveyed – either about other characters, ideas, other things that have occurred elsewhere • Stylistic features and how they reflect on other narratives found in the novel • Inconsistencies/ unusual aspects • Who is speaking and how far are they influencing your perceptions? (e.g. Authorial comment/ indirect speech/ passive voice)