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ALSO BY SEYMOUR CHATMAN Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film Essays on the Language of Literature (edited with Samuel Levin) The Later Style of Henry James Literary Style: A Symposium (edited and translated) A Theory of Meter STORY AND DISCOURSE Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film by SEYMOUR CHATMAN Cornell University Press ITHACA AND LONDON Copyright C 1978 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the·publisher. For information, address Cornell U~ersity Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 1978 by Cornell University Press First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 1980 Printed in the United States of America Acknowledgment is made for: Excerpts from Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, translated by lloyd Alexander, copyright C 1964 by New Directions Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. First published in Great Britain in 1962 by Hamish Hamilton Ltd. Reprinted by permission of New Direc- tions Publishing Corporation and Hamish Hamilton Ltd. Excerpts from Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, copyright C 1955 by Vladimir Nabokov; re printed by permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons and Weidenfeld &. Nicolson. A selection from The Sesma and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer, copyright C 1965, 1968 by Isaac Bashevis Singer; reprinted with the permission of Farrar, Straus &. Giroux, Inc., and Jonathan Cape Ltd. Excerpts from Mrs. DaUoway by Virginia Woolf, copyright 1925 by Harcourt Brace Jo vanovich, Inc.; renewed 1953 by Leonard Woolf. First published 1925 by The Hogarth Pre:ss. Reprinted by permission of the publishers. Excerpts from "The Garden of Forking Paths" from Fiaions by Jorge Luis Borges, trans lated by Anthony Kerrigan; copyright C 1962 by Grove Press, Inc.; C 1956 by Emece Editores, SA., Buenos Aires; reprinted by permission of Grove Press, Inc., and Weiden fe1d &. Nicolson. Excerpts from Two Novels: ]etllousy by Alain Robbe-Grillet, translated by ~chard How ard; copyright c> 1959 by Grove Press, Inc., reprinted by permission of Grove Press, Inc., and John Calder Ltd. Excerpt from The Four Gated City by Doris Lessing, copyright C> 1969 by Doris Lessing Productions'Ltd;-;eprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and James Brown As sociates. Excerpt from "The Idol of the Cyclades" from End of the Game and Other Stories by Julio Cortazar, translated by Paul B~ckburn; copyright C 1967 by Random House, Inc.; re-, printed by permission of Pantheon.- Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data (For library cataloging purposes only) Chatman, Seymour Benjamin. 1928- Story and discourse. Includes bibliographical referen£es and index. 1. Arts 2. Narration (Rhetoric) L TItle. NX650.N37C45 700'.1 78-9329 ISBN-13: 978-0-8014-9186-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8014-9186-X (pbk. : alk. paper) Paperback printing 10 9 For Elaine CONTENTS PREFACE 9 1 INTRODUCTION 15 Narrative and Poetics 17 Elements of a Narrative Theory 19 Is Narrative a Semiotic Structure? 22 Manifestation and Physical Object 26 Narrative Inference, Selection, and Coherence 27 A Sketch of Narrative Structure 31 A Comic Strip Example 37 "Reading" and "Reading Out" 41 2 STORY: EVENTS 43 Sequence, Contingency, Causality 45 Verisimilitude and Motivation 48 Kernels and Satellites 53 Stories and Antistories 56 Suspense and Surprise 59 Time and Plot 62 Order, Duration, and Frequency 63 How Time Distinctions Are Manifested 79 Narrative Macrostructure and the Typology of Plot 84 3 STORY: EXISTENTS 96 Story-Space and Discourse-Space 96 Story-Space in Gnematic Narrative 97 Story-Space in Verbal Narrative 101 Story-Existents: Character 107 Aristotle's Theory of Character 108 Formalist and Structuralist Conceptions of Character 111 Todorov and Barthes on Character 113 Are Characters Open or Closed Constructs? 116 Toward an Open Theory of Character 110 Character: A Paradigm of Traits 126 Kinds of Character 131 A. C. Bradley and the Analysis of Character 134 Setting 138 8 CONTENTS 4 DISCOURSE: NONNARRATED STORIES 146 Real Author, Implied Author, Narrator, Real Reader, Implied Reader, Narratee 147 Point of View and Its Relation to Narrative Voice 151 Point of View in Film 158 Narrators' and Characters' Speech Acts 161 "Nonnarrated" Representation in General 166 Nonnarrated Types: Written Records 169 Pure Speech Records 173 Soliloquy 178 Records of Thought: Direct Free Style=lnterior Monologue 181 Stream of Consciousness=Free Association 186 Interior Monologue in the Cinema 194 5 DISCOURSE: COVERT VERSUS OVERT NARRATORS 196 Covert Narrators 197 Indirect Tagged and Free Style 198 The Manipulation of Sentences for Narrative Purposes: Presupposition as an Example 209 Limitation of Authority in Narrative Transmission 211 Shifting Limited versus Omniscient Mental Access 215 Overt Narration: Set Descriptions 219 Overt Narration: Temporal Summaries 222 Reports of What Characters Did Not Think or Say 225 Ethos and Commentary 226 Commentary 228 Implicit Commentary: Ironic Narrator and Unreliable Narrator 228 Commentary on the Story: Interpretation 237 Commentary on the Story: Judgment 241 Commentary on the Story: Generalization 243 Commentary on the Discourse 248 The Narratee 253 CONCLUSION 261 DIAGRAM OF NARRATIVE STRUCTURE 267 INDEXES: Author and Title, Subject 269 PREFACE The French-with their new-found etymological enthusiasm -have coined the word narratologie, the study of narrative structure. The Anglo-American intellectual community is sus picious of free-swinging uses of -ology, perhaps with justifica tion. The questionability of the name, however, should not be confused with the legitimacy of the topic. There are few books in English on the subject of narrative in general, though libraries bulge with studies of specific genres-novels, epics, short sto ries, tales, fabliaux, and so on. Beyond the analysis of generic differences there lies the determination of what narrative is in itself. Literary critics tend to think too exclusively of the verbal medium, even though they consume stories daily through films, comic strips, paintings, sculptures, dance movements, and music. Common to these. artifacts must be some substratum; otherwise we could not explain the transformation of "Sleeping Beauty" into a movie, a ballet, a mime show. To me the most exciting approach to these questions is dualist and structuralist, in· the Aristotelian tradition. Following such French structuralists as Roland Barthes, Tzvetan Todorov, and Gerard Genette, I posit a what and a way. The what of narrative I call its "story"; the way I call its "discourse." Chapter 1 con tains a brief statement of my argument and its presuppositions. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the components of "story," events and existents (character and setting); Chapters 4 and 5 deal with "discourse," the means through which the story is transmitted. My arrangement is arbitrary only to the extent that I could re verse the two major groups, starting with discourse and ending with story. I prefer the present arrangement because it seems better to reflect the history of theorizing about narratives. (Not that I wish to engage that topic in any direct way; I shall intro duce historical considerations only minimally, as background to the argument.) But much as I might like to, I cannot offer the reader the popular option of choosing his chapters, reading 10 PREFACE backward, or whatever. The theory-for what it is worth-must be read as a whole for any of the parts to be meaningful. Theory is difficult to read, as it is to write; it is exacting, ob durate, yawn-inducing. I have done my best to make it lively, to keep the distinctions provocative and not fussy, and above all, to validate and demonstrate its practicality by quoting ex amples wherever possible. Sometimes in the genesis of the book, the example came first and crystallized the distinction. Art has saved me (if it saves me) by gracing as well as docu menting the pronouncements that the theory of theory sug gests. It is pleasanter to read about the ins and outs of indirect free style when academic prose is mixed with dollops of Joseph Conrad. Indeed, I have had to eliminate many delightful and hard-sought examples to keep the book within buyable and readable limits. The questions of balance and scope have been paramount, and I must justify presenting just this much theory and no more. My primary concern has been to work out, as clearly as I could, the ramifications of the story-discourse dichotomy and to explain those insights, by myself and others, wl:llch it has prompted. So I have excluded many narrative topics that have interested literary scholars-invention, mimesis, the historical development of genres, the relations of narratives to other as pects of literature, to anthropology, philosophy, linguistics, and psychology. One cannot include in a single volume every inter esting issue that impinges upon narrative, and it is perhaps better not even to mention them than to mention them only, without integrating them into the central discussion. I propose a reasonable and modern answer to the question "What is a narrative?" That is, "Which are its necessary and which its ancillary components, and how do they interrelate?" But I do not wish (nor am I able) to account for everything that can be found in narratives. In particular I am concerned with form, rather than content, or with content when it is expressible as a form. My primary object is narrative form rather than the form of the surface of narratives-verbal nuance, graphic design, bal letic movements. "Style" in this sense, the properties of the tex- PREFACE 11 ture of the medium, is fascinating, and those who have read my work know that I have spent many hours on it. Here, however, I am concerned with stylistic details only insofar as they partici pate in or reveal the broader, more abstract narrative move ments.