Narrative Techniques and Representations of Speech and Thought

chapter 3 Narrative Techniques and Representations of Speech and Thought

In real life, acts of speaking, thinking or writing often function as a social lubri- cant and do not necessarily cause other acts or even set grand things in motion. However, the representations of speech and thought in the narratives of my corpus are usually more than just a means to keep a conversation going or to nego- tiate and establish social relationships on the level of the speaking characters. Moreover, a representation of speech or thought tends to be an event that brings about other events, e.g. commands that bring about the execution of those commands or a thought or insight that brings a character to take a certain action. Several narrative techniques play a role in representations of speech and thought in Latin war narratives.1 They pertain to the time (pace and order) and space in a narrative text and to its characters (characterization, explanation and experientiality or ‘what it’s like’).2 In addition, speech and thought representation may present part of the primary narrative because they can give an account of the current events in the story world. Many studies are available on these narratological concepts. I restrict myself to a brief explanation of those concepts that contribute to a better understanding of the speech and thought representations in my corpus, basing myself mainly on the theories of Mieke Bal and Irene de Jong.3 These concepts are used as a tool for close reading of the representations of speeches and thoughts in Caesar’s Bellum Gallicum 1 and 7 and Vergil’s Aeneid 11 and 12. The close readings are presented in chapters 4 and 5 but the outcomes are presented in a summarized form in this chapter. This chapter

1 Cf. also Pausch 2010a: 5–8. 2 I use a narratological framework (based on Genette, Bal, De Jong) in this book. Several functions of speeches are described, in less technical terms, by Marincola 2007 in his in- troductory chapter to speeches in classical historiography. For a similar discussion of the functions of speeches in Statius’ epic Thebaid, see Dominik 1994 especially his chapter on ‘Narrative strategy and the rôle of speeches’. Generally, the use of representations of speech and thought is not the only instrument at the disposal of a narrator with respect to these narrative techniques, but I will not go into these other possible instruments too much and focus on the role of speech and thought representation. 3 E.g. Bal 2009, De Jong 2014.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2017 | doi 10.1163/9789004347120_004 Narrative Techniques 77 thus presents a general idea of the functions of representations of speeches and thoughts in a corpus consisting of Caesar and Vergil.

3.1 Pace

Typically, time goes by in stories. This can be a lot of time: years, decades or centuries, or a very small amount of time, possibly mere minutes.4 Speech and thought representation is one of the means for a narrator to influence the rhythm of a narrative text. The rhythm or pace of a narrative text as a whole can be analysed by means of a comparison between the total length of the text and the time span cov- ered in the story told in this text. However, the duration or pace of a text as a whole is, in itself, not that interesting. It is more telling about the narrative techniques of a narrator to analyse how he varies the rhythm within the larger text, thus revealing when he speeds up the pace of his narrative and at what points he slows down. Variation between different forms of speech and thought representation is an instrument for narrators to influence the rhythm of their narratives.5 Nar- ratologists tend to differentiate between several types of rhythm, of which the summary and scene are of most relevance for my research. In a summary, the narrated time is longer than the time of narration, whereas these (seem to) coincide in scenes.6 Contrasting directly presented speeches and thoughts with mentioned speeches and thoughts, it is unproblematic to claim that direct representations

4 For classicists, a convenient starting point or even standard work for the narratological concept of time in narrative is Time in Ancient Greek Literature by Irene de Jong and René Nünlist 2007. In her introduction to this work, De Jong draws on the works of Genette and Bal (see Genette 1980; Bal 2009). Other influential narratological studies of the concept of time in narrative are Bakhtin 1981 and Ricoeur [1983] 1984–1985. 5 I here base myself on De Jong and Nünlist 2007 and Bal 2009, applying their ideas on ex- cerpts of my corpus. For another example of the influence of types of speech and thought representation on the rhythm of a classical text, see De Bakker 2007: 39 who explicitly discusses the relation between forms of speech and thought representation and the rhythm of the narrative in Herodotus’ Histories. 6 As Bal 2009: 104 observes, most scenes are in fact ‘pseudo-scenes’. She explains that “this is understandable once we realize that a truly synchronic scene, in which the duration of the fabula coincided completely with that of the presentation in the story, would be unreadable.”