TL2-30 Robert Scholes, Robert Kellogs ; The Nature of Narrative Lol Chapter 1 “The Narrative Tradition” 9-302 Narrative literature is distinguished by two characteristics : the presence of a story and a story-teller. In comparision, a drama is a story without a story-teller and a lyric is a direct presentation of a poet that sings or speaks for us to hear.Of course these distinctions are not so clear; for example, a poem that tells a story moves towards narrative. By this time, our view of narrative literature is inevitable novel-centered because the novel has ‘been the dominant form of this kind of literature for the last two centuries.As a consequence, the readers’ expectations about a narrative literary work are based on their experience with the novel and also literary criticism shows a tendency to apply the standards of 19th century realism to all narrative works. This narrow concept of narrative literature has the disadvantage of separating the novel from carlier kinds of narrative and also from possible future forms that may develop.Even advance guard works of present time are misjudged because they do not complay to standard concepts. ‘All att is traditional because artists learn their craft from their predecessors and create new works based on the tradition they have incorporated. Sometimes, artists add some new feature in their art and in doing so, they open up new possibilities for their successors. In this sense, the art of the narrative tradition in the Western World can be traced back to five thousand years ago and the novel is just a result of the evolution of earlier kinds of narrative. ‘The evolution of forms within the narrative tradition is a process analogous to biological evolution, but in some ways it is more complex because different forms often mix and combine with older or new ones? ‘Written narrative literature appeared throughout the Western world under similar conditions. It develop from oral tradition and maintained many of its characteristics for some time. The most important feature of this first written narrative was its traditional character, it was meant to transmit traditions from one generation to the next. Some of the forms of this narrative literature were the sacred myth, the quasi-historical legend and the fictional folktale. In time, all these forms combined in the epic that, amalgamated myth, history and fiction. Then, a gradual movement away from narratives with a traditional plot took place and two great branches of narrative derived from the epic. ‘Allegiance to truth of fact and to actual past Historical] Accurate measurament in time and space. Causality. Ex : Biography Empirical (Allegiance to truth) ‘Allegiance to truth of sensation and environment ye Sy Mimetic | Dependence on observation of the present Development of socio-psychological concepts (behaviour and mental processes) Ex: Autobiography Epic (Allegiance to ideal beauty Romantic Arts and adornment of language (rhetoric) Embellishing of the narrative Fictional Aesthetic impulse (Allegiance to ideal) \ “Allegiance to ideal goodness Didactic } Fable. Leans on romance for narrative articulation Post-Renaissance narrative literature represents a new synthesis.In a gradual process, the empirical and fictional impulses merged and developed into a new literary form, the novel. It represents allegiance to reality but at the same time allegiance to the ideal . / >