Handbook of Narrative Analysis
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1 2 3 4 Handbook of Narrative Analysis 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 [First Page] 12 13 [-1], (1) 14 15 Lines: 0 to 21 16 17 ——— 18 * 439.85pt PgVar ——— 19 Normal Page 20 * PgEnds: PageBreak 21 22 23 [-1], (1) 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 Kim—UofNPress / Page i / / Handbook of Narrative Analysis / Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck 1 frontiers of narrative 2 Series Editor: David Herman, 3 North Carolina State University 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 [-2], (2) 14 15 Lines: 21 to 31 16 17 ——— 18 * 446.85pt PgVar ——— 19 Normal Page 20 * PgEnds: PageBreak 21 22 23 [-2], (2) 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 Kim—UofNPress / Page ii / / Handbook of Narrative Analysis / Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck 1 2 3 Handbook 4 5 6 of Narrative 7 8 9 Analysis 10 11 12 [-3], (3) 13 Written and 14 15 translated by Lines: 31 to 68 16 Luc Herman 17 ——— 18 and Bart Vervaeck 8.0pt PgVar ——— 19 Normal Page 20 * PgEnds: PageBreak 21 22 23 [-3], (3) 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 University of Nebraska Press 37 Lincoln and London 38 Kim—UofNPress / Page iii / / Handbook of Narrative Analysis / Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck 1 Vertelduivels: Handboek verhaalanalyse © 2001 uitgeverij 2 Vantilt & vubpress © 2001 Bart Vervaeck, Leest & Luc 3 Herman, Antwerpen. Translation © 2005 by the Board 4 of Regents of the University of Nebraska. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. 5 Set in Quadraat by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. 6 Design: R. Eckersley. Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. 7 ⅜ϱ 8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 9 Herman, Luc. 10 [Vertelduivels. English] 11 Handbook of narrative analysis / written and translated 12 by Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck. 13 p. cm. – (Frontiers of narrative) [-4], (4) Translation of Vertelduivels : handboek verhaalanalyse. 14 Includes bibliographical references and index. 15 isbn 0-8032-2413-3 (cloth : alkaline paper) – Lines: 68 to 123 16 isbn 0-8032-7349-5 (paperback : alkaline paper) 17 1. Narration (Rhetoric) i. Vervaeck, Bart. ii. Title. ——— 18 iii. Series. * 247.23201pt PgVar ——— 19 pn212.h4813 2005 808–dc22 2004018004 Normal Page 20 * PgEnds: PageBreak 21 22 23 [-4], (4) 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 Kim—UofNPress / Page iv / / Handbook of Narrative Analysis / Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck 1 Acknowledgments vii 2 Introduction 1 3 1. Traditional Questions 2 4 Contents 2. New Questions 8 5 6 Chapter 1 Before and Surrounding Structuralism 11 7 1. Story and Plot 11 8 2. Telling and Showing 14 9 3. Author and Narrator 16 10 4. Narrator and Reader 20 11 5. Consciousness and Speech 23 12 6. Perception and Speech 30 [-5], (5) 13 Chapter 2 Structuralism 41 14 1. Story 45 15 1.1. Events 46 Lines: 123 to 180 16 1.2. Actants 52 17 1.3. Setting 56 ——— 18 2. Narrative 59 0.83217pt PgVar ——— 19 2.1. Time 60 Normal Page 20 2.2. Characterization 67 * PgEnds: PageBreak 21 2.3. Focalization 70 22 3. Narration 80 23 3.1. Narrating 80 [-5], (5) 24 3.2. Consciousness Representation 91 25 26 Chapter 3 Post-Classical Narratology 103 27 1. Postmodern Narratology 108 28 2. Narratology and Ideology 118 29 2.1. Ethics 118 30 2.2. Gender 130 31 3. Narratology and Possible Worlds 149 32 4. Narratology and the Reader 161 33 Appendix A “Pegasian” by Charlotte Mutsaers 177 34 Appendix B “The Map” by Gerrit Krol 179 35 36 Notes 181 37 Bibliography 209 38 Index 221 Kim—UofNPress / Page v / / Handbook of Narrative Analysis / Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 [-6], (6) 14 15 Lines: 180 to 185 16 17 ——— 18 0.0pt PgVar ——— 19 Normal Page 20 * PgEnds: PageBreak 21 22 23 [-6], (6) 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 Kim—UofNPress / Page vi / / Handbook of Narrative Analysis / Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck 1 2 3 4 Acknowledgments 5 6 7 8 Many people have helped us along the way. We wish to thank Jürgen 9 Pieters, Hans Vandevoorde, and Jan Vernimmen, who have read earlier 10 versions of this book, for their many comments and Bert Bultinck, Gert 11 Morreel, and Marija Rac for their contributions to the translation from 12 Dutch to English. Special thanks to David Herman for directing us to 13 unp and to Charlotte Mutsaers and Gerrit Krol for letting us give their [-7], (7) 14 stories the full narratological treatment. 15 Lines: 185 to 200 16 17 ——— 18 * 309.79001pt PgVar ——— 19 Normal Page 20 * PgEnds: PageBreak 21 22 23 [-7], (7) 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 Kim—UofNPress / Page vii / / Handbook of Narrative Analysis / Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 [-8], (8) 14 15 Lines: 200 to 202 16 17 ——— 18 0.0pt PgVar ——— 19 Normal Page 20 PgEnds: T X 21 E 22 23 [-8], (8) 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 Kim—UofNPress / Page viii / / Handbook of Narrative Analysis / Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck 1 2 3 4 Handbook of Narrative Analysis 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 [-9], (9) 14 15 Lines: 202 to 210 16 17 ——— 18 * 439.85pt PgVar ——— 19 Normal Page 20 * PgEnds: PageBreak 21 22 23 [-9], (9) 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 Kim—UofNPress / Page ix / / Handbook of Narrative Analysis / Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 [-10], (10) 14 15 Lines: 210 to 212 16 17 ——— 18 0.0pt PgVar ——— 19 Normal Page 20 PgEnds: T X 21 E 22 23 [-10], (10) 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 Kim—UofNPress / Page x / / Handbook of Narrative Analysis / Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck Introduction No single period or society can do without narratives. And, a good num- ber of contemporary thinkers hasten to add, whatever you say and think about a certain time or place becomes a narrative in its own right. From the oldest myths and legends to postmodern fabulation, narration has [First Page] always been central. Postmodern philosophers may submit that there are no longer any grand, encompassing narratives, but they also con- [1], (1) tend that everything amounts to a narrative, including the world and the self. If that is correct, then the study of narrative is not just a pastime Lines: 0 to 49 for literary theorists in their ivory towers. Instead it unveils fundamen- tal culture-specific opinions about reality and humankind, which are ——— narrativized in stories and novels. 0.0pt PgVar ——— Theories of narrative are misconstrued if they insist on abstraction Theory and practice Normal Page and lose touch with actual stories. This handbook aims to avoid this. It PgEnds: T X is geared to a concrete illustration of the relevance – and the potential E shortcomings – of major narrative theories. This is why we constantly refer to two short stories that we briefly present in this introduction and [1], (1) that we have made available in the appendix to this book: “Pegasian” by Charlotte Mutsaers and “The Map” by Gerrit Krol.1 Although these short Mustsaers and Krol stories have been selected pretty much at random, they can still serve to illustrate several basic problems of narration. In the introduction we only indicate what these problems might be, and we formulate a number of related questions. The rest of the book consists of the various answers to those questions. Obviously we will not restrict ourselves to an analysis of just two stories. When discussing the various theories, we will quote from a number of other narrative texts but always from literary narratives in prose. Literary prose has in fact always been the starting point of the study of narrative, which since its upsurge in the sixties and seventies has come to be known as narratology and which provides the framework for our undertaking. There are many other forms of narration, such as comics and poetry, but we will not be dealing with those. Also, the more 1 Kim—UofNPress / Page 1 / / Handbook of Narrative Analysis / Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck Introduction general cultural dimensions of narration are only occasionally touched upon – mostly in the final chapter in which we connect stories with their contexts. Limiting ourselves in such a way is a direct consequence of our effort to remain as close to the actual texts as we possibly can. 1. traditional questions The narrator Contrary to poetry and drama, a prose story cannot do without a narrator, problem or so most people seem to think. The first lines of “The Map” seem to feature one of those good old narrators who knows everything and hovers over the universe of the story. He tells about the Christian shops whose shades were rolled down on Sundays. Yet in the second paragraph it becomes clear that this seemingly objective voice is in fact subjective [2], (2) since it belongs to an I-narrator. It seems obvious to imagine that this I-narrator is present already in the first paragraph but that he remains Lines: 49 to 91 more or less in the background.