Departamento de Filología Moderna

ANALYSIS OF LITERARY TEXTS IN ENGLISH

Prof. Ángel Mateos-Aparicio – Office: 217

E-mail: Angel.Mateos@uclm.es

BASIC LITERARY TERMS ANALYSIS AND BASIC LITERARY ANALYSIS (II):

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE AND TYPES OF NARRATOR

2.a. Narrative Structure: The Plot

 The plot is the skeleton of a story: “The plot is important to the novel much as
the skeleton is important to a human body” (45).
 “A plot is a story, a selection of events arranged in time, and one reason why we
go on reading a novel is to see what happens next” (45).
 The plot is based on causality: sequence (beginning, middle end of the story),
motives, consequences, relationship among characters.
 The plot summarizes the structure of a novel (the way the story is organized).
 The plot is related to time:
 Flashback
 Distortions in the narrative line
 Parallel stories
 “All plots are extremely simple in comparison with the complexities of real life”
 “The writer’s ideology will affect his choice of plot (…)” (65): what is selected
and how it is organized.
 The plot may be simple or complex.

Reading: “The Blue Carbuncle,” by Arthur Conan Doyle

Reading: Gérard Genette, “Order in Narrative”

2.b. Narrative Structure: Narrative Levels

Reading: Leech and Short, Chapter 8 from Style in Fiction.

 A narrative is a discourse situation, that is, a communication between the writer

and the reader. This means that, in general, the “real” communication in a literary
work happens between the writer (author) and the reader.
 Nevertheless, there may be other narrative levels inside the story (think of the
narrator of “The Cask of Amontillado”). The author may invent a person
(narrator) to tell the story, or even they may pretend that somebody else wrote
the story.
 Notion of “implied author” and “implied reader” (Leech and Short).

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 Narratives tend to be complex entities, and include characters who narrate other
stories. If this is the case, we have stories within stories (see “The Blue
Carbuncle.” Who narrates the story?).
 “The writer’s ideology will affect his choice of plot (…)” (65)

Reading: “The Company of Wolves,” by Angela Carter

Reading: “The Blue Carbuncle,” by Arthur Conan Doyle

2.c. Narrative Structure: Types of narrator.

 Third person omniscient narrator.
 The third person omniscient narrator normally know everything about the
story: what the characters say, what they do, what they did in the past and what
they will do in the future.
 In this sense, the third person omniscient narrator is often compared to a
godlike figure: this narrator knows more than the characters (everything, like a
god).
 The effect of third person narrator is often one of objectivity, or objective
point of view. The story appears to be told transparently.
 Sometimes the third person narrator is not omniscient: he show a limited
knowledge of the story.
 First person narrator.
 The first person narrator tells the story in the first person, which implies that
he is a witness or a character in the story.
 First person narration tends to be subjective: the reader follows the piont of
view of the narrator, and shares his/her emotions, opinions, lack of knowledge,
etc.
 The narrator/character has a limited knowledge of the story.
 Because of this constant contact with one character and viewpoint, the first
person narration incites the reader to sympathize with the narrator, although
sometimes this narrator cannot be trusted.
 Multiple narrators.
 Sometimes, the story is told by more than one character.
 In this case, the character tells his/her own version and interpretation of the
story, and it is the reader who has to create a plot and an interpretation of the
whole story.

Readings: “The Demon Lover,” Elizabeth Bowen (third person)

“The Blue Carbuncle,” by Arthur C. Doyle
“EPICAC,” by Kurt Vonnegut (first person)
Extracts from As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner (multiple narrator)

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http://www.uclm.es/dep/fmoderna/indexr.htm