3.

Types of Narrative Technique in British-American Literature

1) Narrative point
point of view
through whose perspective

- first person view („I” or „We”)
e.g. Rose for Emily, Great Gatsby
- alternate between first and third person narrative (personal, omniscient)
- epistolary novels (=letters)
e.g. Frankenstein, Dracula, Treasure Island

2) Narrative voice
determines a set of consistent feature

- stream of consciousness
replicate the through process
e.g. Ulysess
- character voice
1st person, 3rd person
e.g. Gatsby
- unreliable voice (naive)
dubious, unworthy
e.g. Wuthering Heights
- epistolary voice
uses letters
e.g. Frankenstein
- 3rd person voices
• Subjective
• Limited
• Objective
• Omniscient

- Literary element
• Fictive person
• Author himself
• Character in the story
- participant in the story or nonparticipant (implied character, omniscient or semi-omniscient)

relates to the audience
- can be more than one person, show different storylines at the same, similar or different times

Medieval Era:
Chaucer’s works
culmination of the English medieval narrative tradition
Before growing literary self-consciousness
various narrative forms (homily, romance,
dream vision, narrative collection)
Canterbury Tales
• Tales written in verse
• Usage of vernacular English
• Frame narrative (common, well-established genre)
• Largely linear structure of tales
• Chaucer emphasizes the people’s description
• Chaucer
not only does he consider readers as an audience but other pilgrims as well
+ not target any specific audience or social class)
• General Prologue (1st person narrative)
• Each story narrated by different pilgrims
omniscient 3rd POV
• Between tales the travellers comment on a tale

Restoration Period: Charles Dickens: Great Expectations

• Pipa s narrator
1st person narrative
• Pip’s own narrative style
 • Pip is able to convey the viewpoint of both his younger self and the mature one
• He exposes his fault
honest narrator
• Dickens allows Pip to speak with a distinctive voice
• Vivid storytelling, fluid sentences
• Humour and Irony
• Others can speak as well
- Joe is uneducated but more articulate
- Hypocratic Pumblechook
- Polite but! Plain Biddy
- Rough but! Kind Hagmitch

Modernism
- Stylistic and self-referential play of the novel has been read as a strategy of
containment
- Increasing formalization of the novel
tendency toward artistic autonomy and array
from mimesis where the ideal sphere of art compensates for the transformation of
experience in a word where urbanization, the use of monopoly and state capitalism,
political movement
- Experimentation
- Lack of traditional chronological narrative (discontinuous narrative)
- Break of narrative frames (fragmentation)
- Morning from one level of narrative to another
- Number of different narrators
- Use of the stream of consciousness technique

Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness

• Narrative frame (
medieval tale telling
but! Newly fashioned instrument
allows the narrator to be a distant observer of events he had witnessed)
• Marlow must speak for himself as he relates his distant part
• Interplay between the narrator’s perception of Marlow’s journey and Marlow’s
own account established irony in both POV and narrative voice
• Innovative use of perspective
- Established notions of truth
- Concept of subjectivity
- Reliability of governing voice (eye-witness)
• The unnamed narrator offers various insights into the characters of Marlow
• Secondary narrator = Marlow’s 1st person narration (but it is in Kurtz’s story)
• Marlow’s narrative is inconclusive
• Quotation marks add reliability to the primary narrator
• Conrad’s prose is like a simple translation of words
• Use of hyponyms
• Autobiographical novel
American Literature
18th – 19th century
Epistolary novel (+ diary entries, newspaper clippings, other documents)
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Washington Irving
Unique American style
war of 1812
increasing desire to produce American literature
and culture
Abolitionism inspired
narrative autobiography (Frederick Douglas)

F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby

• The story is told in the first person, through the eyes of Nick Carraway. The
primary and most visible story is about Jay Gatsby and his devotion to his dream.
Other stories, also told through Carraway’s eyes, include Tom’s reconciliation
with his wife Daisy, Nick’s own relationship with Jordan, and Nick’s evolving
friendship with Gatsby. Nick is only able to tell these stories through his limited
omniscience. At times, he is able to narrate scenes despite not being present.
• Modern narrative
• Nick’s memories
“I”
readers feel involved
• Judges everyone, including himself
- Strengthening reality
- Both in and out of the story
• Fitzgerald holds sympathy
• Describes only what he sees
• Meditation of a character
witness permits a play between the real and the
imaginary (similar to Hawthorne + difficult to distinguish)
• Not fully reliable (not first-hand information
then quotes others)
• Picks up information from gossips
• Self-conscious narrator
• The closer the character gets to Nick, the more blurred they proved to be

unreliable