Narrative Form Suzanne Keen Narrative Form This page intentionally left blank Narrative Form Suzanne Keen Washington and Lee University © Suzanne Keen 2003 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-0-333-96097-4 ISBN 978-0-230-50348-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230503489 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Keen, Suzanne. Narrative form / Suzanne Keen. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-333-96097-4 (pbk.) 1. Narration (Rhetoric) 2. Fiction—Technique. I. Title. PN3383.N35K44 2003 808.3’3—dc21 2003046946 10987654321 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 For Jake This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface: Studying Narrative Form x 1 Major Approaches to and Theorists of Narrative 1 What is narrative fiction? 1 Why study narrative form? 5 Major theorists of and approaches to narrative: a selective sketch 7 Studying narrative: selected resources 13 Further reading 15 2 Shapes of Narrative: A Whole of Parts 16 Analytical strategies 25 Keywords 28 Further reading 29 3 Narrative Situation: Who’s Who and What’s its Function 30 Terms 32 Narrators 36 Perspective 44 Second-person narration 45 Analytical techniques 48 Keywords 50 Further reading 53 4 People on Paper: Character, Characterization, and Represented Minds 55 Terms 57 Representing consciousness 59 Characterization and kinds of character 64 Analytical techniques 69 Keywords 71 Further reading 72 5 Plot and Causation: Related Events 73 Terms 75 Analytical techniques 82 Typological approaches to plot 83 Feminist critiques of plot and closure 86 vii viii Contents Generic approaches to plot 86 Keywords 87 Further reading 88 6 Timing: How Long and How Often? 90 Terms 92 Analytical techniques 95 Keywords 96 Further reading 98 7 Order and Disorder 99 Terms 100 Analytical strategies 104 Keywords 107 Further reading 107 8 Levels: Realms of Existence 108 Terms 108 Analytical strategies 112 Keywords 114 Further reading 114 9 Fictional Worlds and Fictionality 116 Terms 118 Analytical techniques 123 Keyword 124 Further reading 126 10 Disguises: Fiction in the Form of Nonfiction Texts 128 Terms 129 Analytical strategies 138 Keywords 139 Further reading 140 11 Genres and Conventions 141 Terms 141 Analytical strategies 147 Keywords 151 Further reading 152 Contents ix Appendix A. Terms Listed by Chapter 154 Appendix B. Representative Texts: A List of Suggested Readings 163 Notes 167 Bibliography 179 Index 189 Preface Studying Narrative Form Advanced students of literature, creative writing graduate students, and teachers will find in this handbook a concise treatment of narrative form in fiction. A useful supplement to a course of study in the novel or narrative fiction, it also serves as a first introduction to the broad field of narrative theory. Throughout, I use the term ‘narrative form’ to encompass the strategies used in the making of narrative fiction and the traits, shapes, and conventions that a careful reader can observe in narratives such as novels and stories. The first full-length chapter, on major approaches to and theo- rists of narrative, begins with the problems entailed in defining narrative fiction and situates this text’s focus on fictional narrative form within the most important schools of thought on the subject. Despite this emphasis, many of the techniques discussed are employed in nonfictional narratives as well, and the points of commonality are acknowledged. Towards the end of the text, chapters on fictional worlds and fictionality (Chapter 9) and disguises or fiction in the form of other texts (Chapter 10) raise some ques- tions about the intrinsic formal distinction of fictional from nonfictional narrative. For the most part, readers of this book can expect a close focus on the techniques and formal qualities of narrative fiction. Makers of narrative use identifiable tools and techniques to craft stories. Whether they work by inherited traditions, by habit, deliberately, uncon- sciously, according to formulas, in imitation of admired precursors, or with deliberate aims of experimentation and innovation, they take up tools of language and build fictional worlds in which narrators introduce readers to imaginary persons who move, think, feel, and act, in those patterned sequences of events that go by the everyday name of plot. Together the makers and receivers of narrative construct a matrix in which a story can be realized and interpreted. Readers or viewers, experts in narrative by virtue of being human, then enliven fictional worlds in their minds, completing them by responding to them imaginatively. There interpretation begins, with reading. This book aims to provide advanced students of narrative with a critical vocabulary and a variety of strategies for analyzing the formal qualities of fiction. It suggests ways to supplement thematic inter- pretations with accurate observations about form. The specialized work of identifying, naming, and analyzing the formal devices of narrative has been accomplished, mainly in the twentieth x Preface xi century, by a diverse group of critics and theorists. In a few important cases these theorists are fiction writers themselves, but narrative theory for the last half-century has been separated, as a discipline, from creative writing. One of the many things that differentiates this book from others like it is its intention to write about narrative form for both critics and creators of narrative. Creative writers familiar with the many books on the craft of fiction will find that this book is less prescriptive and more descriptive than most guides to writing fiction. One of the precepts of narrative poetics, the descriptive theory of narrative, is to emphasize possibilities even when examples do not readily come to mind. Thus a creative writer may consider creating an external, authorial, third-person omniscient and unreliable nar- rator, even though unreliability more often appears in first-person narra- tors. (In fact, Ian McEwan just did it, in Atonement [2001].) Warnings against undertaking formal experiments, or against trying techniques that increase the degree of difficulty for the reader, I leave to handbooks written by literary agents. No tool or technique is disparaged here, for I take the view that, in the hands of a talented writer, any aspect of fictional form can be handled with persuasive or innovative results. Knowing the names and possible applications of these tools and tech- niques enhances a reader’s understanding and appreciation of the craft of fiction. For the advanced student, this book provides a way to acquire a more sophisticated theoretical vocabulary and a menu of critical strategies, both of which can augment the presentation of evidence in analytical essays. Creative writers may decide to try new techniques or experiment with the tools they are already using in their work. Teachers—I assume that graduate students are often also teachers or tutors—will find that the dis- cussion of narrative form always includes suggestions about how noticing form might be used analytically—and by extension pedagogically—to open discussions or support assignments from a range of approaches to narrative literature. A book on narrative form may safely be described as formalist in nature. ‘Formalism’ has often been used as a disparaging term, suggesting hopeless abstraction from the real world, blind obedience to unexamined standards of value, neglect of historical change, disinterest in what happens when people read texts, and, at worst, a sort of hermetic practice carried out for the benefit of a priestly caste of elite interpreters. I hope that it will become plain that this textbook attempts to avoid all these charges. Narrative Form does not argue that literary critics should return to some earlier, purer, more transparent, or natural, critical approach to literature, in which the study of form is self-evidently valuable. It expresses instead the modest xii Preface view that narrative fiction is made using a diverse kit of tools and tech- niques, wrought into different shapes and sizes, and employed to a variety of ends. It suggests that an understanding of formal traits of narrative can be used to support and complicate arguments with extra-literary interests. In this, it will be obvious to professional readers, my perspective owes a great deal to the pluralism of several generations of Chicago critics. Their interest in genre and form and particularly in the changes that occur over time in the careers of genres or conventions has been accomplished in work that attends to ethics, readers, and real-world consequences of rhetor- ical choices. Arising not in opposition to recent trends in literary and cultural studies, but in sympathy with them, this textbook rests on the assumption that critical conversations about content or theme gain from encounters with form.