STYLISTICS

LECTURE 7
TYPES OF NARRATION

AUTHOR’S NARRATIVE
For the production of literature there must be an AUTHOR (addresser), A TEXT
and A READER (addressee). The work of creative prose is never homogeneous as
to the form and essence of the information it carries. Both very much depend on
the viewpoint of the ADDRESSER, as the author and his personages may offer
different angles of perception of the same object. Naturally, it is the author who
organizes this effect of polyphony, but we, the readers (ADDRESSES), while
reading the text, identify various views with various personages, not attributing
them directly to the author (in fact, forgetting about him). And it is only in the
author’s speech when his views and emotions are mostly explicitly expressed.
Such author’s speech is called the AUTHOR’S NARRATIVE. The unfolding of
the plot is mostly concentrated in the author’s narrative, personages are given
characteristics, and the time and the place of the action are also described here, as
the author sees them. The author’s narrative supplies the reader with direct
information about the author’s preferences and objections, beliefs and
contradictions, i.e. serves the major source of shaping up the AUTHOR”S
IMAGE.

ENTRUSTED NARRATIVE
In contemporary prose, in an effort to make his writing more artful, to impress the
reader with the effect of authenticity of the described events, the writer
ENTRUSTS some fictitious character (who might actually also participate in the
narrated events) with the task of story-telling. The writer himself thus hides behind
the figure of the narrator, presents all the events of the story from the personage’s
viewpoint and only sporadically emerges in the narrative with his own
considerations which may reinforce or contradict those expressed by the narrator.
This form of the author’s speech is called ENTRUSTED NARRATIVE.
The structure of the entrusted narrative is much more complicated than that of the
author’s narrative proper, because instead of the organizing image of the author,
we have the hierarchy of (1) the NARRATOR’S image seemingly arranging the
pros and contras of the related problem, and, (2) looming above the narrator’s
image there stands the image of the AUTHOR, the true and actual creator of it all,
responsible for all the views and evaluations of the text and serving the major and
predominant force of textual cohesion and unity.
Entrusted narrative can be carried out in the 1 st person singular, when the narrator
proceeds with the story openly and explicitly, from his own name, as, e.g. in The
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, The Great Gatsby by Sc. Fitzgerald, or All the
King’s Men by R.P. Warren. In the first book Holden Caulfield himself retells
about the crisis in his own life which makes the focus of the novel. In the second
book Nick Carraway tells about Jay Gatsby, whom he met only occasionally, so
that to tell Gatsby’s life-story he had to describe other personages too. And in the
third book Jack Burden renders the dramatic career of Willie Stark, himself being
one of the closest associates of the man. In the first case the narration has fewer
deviations from the main line, than in the other two, in which the narrators have to
supply the reader also with the information about themselves and their connection
with the protagonist ((pro’tegonist) – the main character in a book, play or film).
Entrusted narrative may also be anonymous. The narrator does not openly claim
the responsibility for the views and evaluations but the manner of presentation, the
angle of description very strongly suggest that the story is told not by the author
himself but by some of his anonymous heroes, as we see, e.g. in the prose of F.
O’Connor, E. Hemingway, E. Caldwell.

DIALOGUE
The narrative, both author’s and entrusted, is not the only type of narration
observed in creative prose. A very important place here is occupied by
DIALOGUE, where personages express their minds in the form of uttered speech.
In their exchange of remarks the participants of the dialogue, while discussing
other people and their actions, expose themselves too. So, dialogue is one of the
most significant forms of the personage’s SELF-CHARACTERIZATION, which
allows the author to seemingly eliminate himself from the process.
The word ‘dialogue’ derives from the Greek word ‘to converse’, thus it involves at
least two people. A dialogue is to be distinguished from the MONOLOGUE, an
utterance by a single speaker with no expectation of a response from another
speaker.
In the novels, representation of the characters’ speech is frequently direct dialogue,
but other modes of representation may be used (we’ll discuss them later). But even
direct real dialogue present an ‘edited’ or stylized version of what actual dialogue
in real life would be like; and, in any case, is subordinated, like dramatic dialogue,
to the structure and theme of the work as a whole. Moreover, unlike real-life
dialogue, it is designed to be ‘overheard’ by readers.
Even the dialogue of drama, which is intended to be performed orally, has few of
the hesitations and lapses of natural speech. In poetic drama, indeed (e.g. of
Shakespeare) the rhythms are of verse, not conversation.
It was Aristotle who first stressed the significance of dialogue in drama: verbal
action as well as the action of the plot. Dialogue is virtually obligatory in drama, at
least in the mainstream Western tradition; it is optional in fiction.
Dialogue is used in the widest possible sense by the Russian philosopher Mikhail
Bakhtin. He suggested that every utterance, every sentence (and hence even
monologues) are oriented to the anticipated implied response of the recipient. This
philosophy of language is called the DIALOGIC PRINCIPLE of communication.

INTERIOR SPEECH
Another form, which obtained position of utmost significance in contemporary
prose, is INTERIOR SPEECH OF THE PERSONAGES, which allows the author
(and the readers) to peep into the inner world of the character, to observe his ideas
and views. Interior speech is best known in the form of interior monologue, a
rather lengthy piece of the text half a page and over) dealing with one major topic
of the character’s thinking, offering causes for his past, present or future actions.
Short pieces of interior speech present immediate mental and emotional reactions
of the personages to the remark or action of other characters.
The results of the work of our brain are not intended for communication and are,
correspondingly, structured in their own unique way. The imaginative reflection of
mental processes, presented in the form of interior speech, being a part of the text,
one of the major functions of which is communicative, necessarily undergoes some
linguistic structuring to make it understandable for the readers. In extreme case,
though, the author makes efforts to portray the purely associative, incoherent
manner of thinking, which makes interior speech almost or completely
incomprehensible. These cases exercise the so-called STREAM-OF-
CONSCIOUSNESS TECHNIQUE, which is especially popular with
representatives of modernism in contemporary literature.

So, the personage’s viewpoint can be realized in the UTTERED (DIALOGUE) and
INNER (INTERIOR SPEECH) forms. Both are introduced into the text by the
author’s remarks containing indication of the personage (his name or name-
substitute) and the act of speaking (thinking) expressed by such words as ‘to say’,
‘to think’ and their numerous synonyms.
To separate and individualize the sphere of the personage, language means
employed in the dialogue and interior speech differ from those used in the author’s
narrative and, in their unity and combination, they constitute the personage’s
SPEECH CHARACTERISTIC which is indispensable in the creation of his image
in the novel.

REPRESENTED (REPORTED) SPEECH

The last – the fourth – type of narration observed in artistic prose is a peculiar
blend of the viewpoints and language spheres of both the author and the character.
It was first observed and analyzed almost a hundred years ago, with the term
REPRESENTED (REPORTED) SPEECH attached to it.
Represented speech serves to show either the mental reproduction of a once uttered
remark, or the character’s thinking. It combines the characteristics of direct and
indirect speech. Like direct speech, it is characterized by the syntactical
independence of sentences, by the use of exclamatory and interrogative forms, of
elliptical sentences, by the use of emotional words and interjections, words as ‘yes’
or ‘no’. Like in indirect speech, in represented speech the third person of pronouns
may be used and the sequence of tenses is observed.

There are two types of represented speech – REPRESENTED UTTERED

SPEECH and REPRESENTED INNER SPEECH.

Represented uttered speech shows the shift from the author’s narrative into the
character’s utterance. It is the including of an uttered word, remark or a whole
dialogue in the author’s speech, only with some morphological changes: the tense-
forms are shifted to the past, the personal pronouns are changed from the 1st or 2 nd
to 3rd person, though the syntactical structure remains unchanged.
E.g. ‘Angela, who was taking in every detail of Eugene’s old friend, replied in
what seemed an affected tone that no, she wasn’t used to studio life: she was just
from the country, you know – a regular farmer girl – Blackwood, Wisconsin, no
least” (T. Dreiser).
In this passage the transition from the author’s narrative into the uttered
represented speech, besides morphological shifts, is characterized by some lexical
peculiarities: the particle ‘no’, the parenthetical words ‘just’, ‘you know’; the
inverted commas are omitted. It means that the direct answers to the questions are
given in the form of represented uttered speech, thus, the whole paragraph gets a
conversational coloring.

Represented inner speech usually renders the character’s unuttered thoughts and
ideas. This type is more frequently used by the writers than the other variety. It is
close to the personage’s interior speech in essence, but differs from it in form: it is
rendered in the third person singular and may have the author’s qualitative words,
that is it reflects the presence of the author’s viewpoint alongside that of the
character, while interior speech belongs to the personage completely, which is
materialized through the first-person pronouns and the language idiosyncrasies
(personal characteristics) of the character.
Represented inner speech, on the one hand, discloses the inner working of human
mind; it enables the author to withdraw from the narrative and to convey most
objectively the psychological state of the character, the feelings and emotions that
overcome him. On the other hand, it produces a greater impact on the reader who
can view the events through the character’s perception, can listen to his own words
in shorter or longer monologues.
Represented inner speech is usually introduced into the narrative by verbs of
mental perception: think, feel, wonder, ask, understand, remember, occur etc.
Let us analyze the following excerpt from Galsworthy’s novel “To Let”:
‘Ah, and why didn’t she come?.. Memory of the day when Fleur was born, and he
waited in such agony with her life and her mother’s balanced in his hands, came
to him sharply. He had saved her then, to be the flower of his life. And now she is
going to give him trouble? He did not like the look of things!.. Ah! There was the
car at last. It drew p, it had luggage, but no Fleur.
‘Miss Fleur is walking up, sir, by the path’. Walking all those miles? Walking up?
And the fellow’s grin! The boy-! He turned abruptly from the window. He couldn’t
spy on her.”
In the fragment the quotation marks are absent, but it is not the author’s narration.
The syntactic and lexical peculiarities are those of direct speech: interrogative and
exclamatory sentences, breaks in the thoughts. There are introductory words
‘Memory came to him sharply’, which is another evidence of it being represented
inner speech. The first sentence of the second paragraph is the direct speech of the
servant. Then comes Soames Forsyte’s inner represented speech, two interrogative
and an elliptical sentence, conveying his emotions.
Sometimes the shift from the author’s narrative to represented inner speech is
almost imperceptible.
Many English and American writers (Thackeray, Dickens, Jane Austin, S.
Maugham, E. Hemingway) frequently resorted to this stylistic device to fully
disclose the psychological state of their characters.

NARRATIVE COMPOSITIONAL FORMS

The four types of narration, briefly described in this lecture are singled out on the
basis of their structural organization.
If it is SEMANTICS of the text that is taken as a foundation of the classification,
then we will deal the three NARRATIVE COMPOSITIONAL FORMS,
traditionally analyzed in poetics and stylistics.
They are: NARRATIVE PROPER where the unfolding of the plot is concentrated.
This is the most dynamic compositional form of the text.
Two other forms – DESCRIPTION and ARGUMENTATION – are static.
Description supplies the details of the appearance of people and things
“populating” the book, of the place and time of action. Argumentation offers
causes and effects of the personage’s behavior, his (or the author’s) considerations
about moral, ethical, ideological and other issues. It is rather seldom that any of
these compositional forms is used in a ‘pure’, uninterrupted way. As a rule they
intertwine even within the boundaries of one paragraph.